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from the cruel-and-unfortunately-becoming-usual dept.
The Center for American Progress reports:
Man Remains Alive Nearly 2 Hours After Injection
Using an unusual concoction of drugs this afternoon, Arizona attempted to execute a man on death row. One hour after he was supposed to have been lethally injected, however, Joseph Rudolph Wood was still alive, "gasping and snoring." Wood's lawyers filed an emergency request to stay the execution and give the man life-saving help, but it was too late: After two hours, he died.
Wood's execution almost didn't occur today. Just three days ago, a federal appeals court put the lethal injection plans on pause, requiring the state to disclose "the name and provenance of the drugs to be used in the execution" and "the qualifications of the medical personnel" performing the execution. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme court reversed that lower court's ruling, and, after another brief stay by Arizona's Supreme Court, the execution continued as planned
All this conflict has arisen because overseas drug-makers have raised moral objections to their products being used in executions, and refused to sell the medications for that purpose. As the usual drugs used to lethally inject inmates have been pulled from the shelves by their makers, the American justice system has turned to untested, often undisclosed, drugs to kill its inmates. Those drugs are usually made not in pharmacies but in drug compounding facilities not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
What's more, administering lethal injection violates the Hippocratic oath, to which doctors must adhere. That means that the people performing the injections are often less qualified to do so.
Wood's extended survival through execution is only one of several horrible results from this conflict. Just last month, Oklahoma botched an execution, leaving inmate Clayton Lockett writhing in pain for 43 minutes before he suffered the massive heart attack that ultimately killed him. And before him, there were more: Eric Robert, for example, turned purple and gasped for 20 minutes before he died back in 2012. Michael Lee Wilson was said to have screamed, "I feel my whole body burning" before he eventually died during his execution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @12:57PM
The suffering of those being executed is not an unfortunate side effect but the reason why executions are done the way they are.
(Score: 1) by FuzzyTheBear on Thursday July 24 2014, @02:02PM
There's an article in the Laws of this land that are against it. State sponsored murder is not a torture session. They choose to do something that does not affect crime incidence. the death penalty has over and over be shown totally ineffective against murderers , be they mentally challenged or not. If you insist on the death penalty , though it solves nothing , not even the family's desire for vengeance , not justice , vengeance ,then a firing squad is the way to go. Quick and can't go wrong . 10 guys , 10 rifles and 9 bullets.
Anything else is babrabian in nature and shows how low the instincts of the Americans are.Most of the civilised world has long moved off from it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:18PM
I smell either a potential cost-cutting measure, or a guy who forgot to load his rifle here. Is the 10th guy the prisoner, or the guy who tells them when to fire?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by Nollij on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:38PM
I believe it's to maintain anonymity of the executioner. No one knows who actually fired the shot (at least one would be a blank) that killed the person.
Same as the executioner hood, or multiple hangmen pulling different switches.
(Score: 2) by compro01 on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:56PM
One of the rifles is loaded with a blank. It's supposed to allow the firing squad members to rationalize their consciences clear by believing that they were the one with the blank and thus they didn't kill a person.
(Score: 1) by Ellis D. Tripp on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:07PM
or completely inexperienced, and unable to detect the difference in recoil between a blank and a real round.
"Society is like stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you end up with a lot of scum on the top!"--Edward Abbey
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:27PM
Sounds like a lot of theatrical hand-wringing bollocks to me.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:09PM
What about 12 guys, 12 rifles, 5 live rounds, 7 blanks? On the balance of probability, no-one knows who makes the fatal shot. And there's enough redundancy in case anyone gets twitchy.
Or what about 12 guys who are allowed to read the court transcript, meet the prisoner and then choose live rounds on a probabilistic basis? If you think the prisoner is innocent, choose a blank. If you think he's possibility guilty, mix a bag of live rounds and blank rounds and choose one. If everyone fires and the prisoner lives then the prisoner is free to go.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:00PM
Judge, jury, AND execution squad? There is a reason these roles are best separated! (There is also a reason executions are no longer public: See Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_)
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday July 25 2014, @04:14AM
I watched an interview with a Texas(?) prison guard who participated in death penalties. A man he executed was later found to be innocent. This left him very shaken and questioning his life. In such circumstances, a person could commit suicide. Instead, he became campaigner against the death penalty.
I'm suggesting that if death penalties are going to be performed, a person should only participate if they're personally satisfied about the prisoner's guilt rather than following an order then discovering the order was based on inaccurate information or faulty logic. If there was some autonomy in the process, people could rationalize subsequent discrepancies. This would reduce the emotional burden on individuals who act on behalf of the state.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 25 2014, @04:37AM
Did you see the movie, "Monster's Ball" with Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thorton? Even if they are guilty, for any other human to decide they deserve to die is a _difficult_ thing, because we are not infalliable. Even some modicum of decency, such as prohibiting "cruel and unusual" punishment, is really only a bone we throw to ourselves. That is the real reason Foucault suggests the executions moved from open air, public events (think: Braveheart with William Wallace), because the mass of the population might at some point realize that they had more in common with the condemned that the victim, and then the gig would be up. Same thing happened when the Supreme Court of the United States of America put a moratorium on the death penalty because it seemed that most people being executed were, um, minorities. This was lifted, but the work of the Innocents Project out of Cardoza Law School suggests that it should not have been. I have had people say, oh well, if we have to occasionally execute an innocent person to keep the crazed sodomite mass murderers in check, it's worth it. Another person immediately said, "Yeah, unless the innocent person is you!" Turns out that is less important than he thought: executing an innocent person makes us murderers, and it is better to be executed for murder when you are innocent, than to execute some one who is innocent, even if you had know way of knowing. Botch != our bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @08:13AM
Yes, the reason being that either one of those can refuse.
If the executioner doesn't get the choice, we might as well label the bullet "executioner" and the guy pulling the trigger "judge".
(Score: 1) by SecurityGuy on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:26PM
This should never be true. We should never do this because it's been proven we occasionally execute the wrong person. For that matter, we should not execute because we occasionally execute the wrong person. I'd allow it as an option for the convicted, though. If you are sentenced for the sort of crime that often carries the death penalty now and would rather have the death penalty than society spend a $million or so jailing you for the rest of your life, fine.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:25PM
Could be some unforeseen consequences there. If suicide and/or assisted suicide are not available for some reason (or you don't trust that it won't fail and leave you in more pain than before), a desperate soul might see the extended version of death-by-cop as a justified way to go. Then you get cancer patients going on a rampage and opting for the death penalty. Real messy, expensive, painful way to get the end you can't get elsewhere.
Personally, I think a person should have to right to choose when to go out, and have a humane method available so it doesn't get into the lives of people who don't choose to participate.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @08:17AM
That did happen in the dark ages. If you killed someone, you could repent, accept Jesus and go to heaven. But if you committed suicide, you didn't have time to repent and accept Jesus, so you were guaranteed to go to hell. As a result, people who wanted to commit suicide became murderers so they could be executed and go to heaven.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @04:06PM
Whoever said that religion was illogical?!
(Score: 1) by subs on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:06PM
If causing suffering is the purpose, then why not bring back hanging, drawing and quartering [wikimedia.org], or the good 'ol breaking wheel [wikimedia.org]? Oh, I know why, because this isn't the fucking dark age [si.edu], so I advise you to board the nearest train back to the 14th century and let the rest of us to progress beyond our lowest instincts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @04:30AM
Don't attack the messenger. The typical proponent for the death sentence is ironically often Christian. If they could get away with it, they would institute the stoning of pregnant teenagers for being such filthy whores and cutting off people's hands for theft, like their "Good Book" suggests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @06:52AM
If torture is not the point why not use one of the available methods that are painless, fast, reliable and cheaper, such as N2?
Besides, again and again officials get caught off-guard, expressing "Let the ********** suffer!11" attitudes...