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Matt Ford writes in The Atlantic that thanks to a European Union embargo on the export of key drugs, and the refusal of major pharmaceutical companies to sell them the nation’s predominant method of execution is increasingly hard to perform. With lethal injection’s future uncertain, some states are turning to previously discarded methods. The Utah legislature just approved a bill to reintroduce firing squads for executions, Alabama’s House of Representatives voted to authorize the electric chair if new drugs couldn’t be found, and after last years botched injection, Oklahoma legislators are mulling the gas chamber.
The driving force behind the creation and abandonment of execution methods is the constant search for a humane means of taking a human life. Arizona, for example, abandoned hangings after a noose accidentally decapitated a condemned woman in 1930. Execution is prone to problems as witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength." The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands. The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks." The physical effects of the deadly hydrogen cyanide in the gas chamber are coma, seizures and cardiac arrest but the time lag has previously proved a problem. According to Ford one reason lethal injection enjoyed such tremendous popularity was that it strongly resembled a medical procedure, thereby projecting our preconceived notions about modern medicine—its competence, its efficacy, and its reliability—onto the capital-punishment system. "As states revert to earlier methods of execution—techniques once abandoned as backward and flawed—they run the risk that the death penalty itself will be seen in the same terms."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @05:47PM
: doIts like the current methods have some sort why an overdose on anesthetics isn't sufficient
Propofol
Sevoflurane
Etc
its like the current methods are meant to be mean.
If you are going to be mean then make it a pit fight against deathrow inmates, winner lives another year.
What? Yeah that's fucked up. Let's go with propofol isoflurane in a freezer room.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:03AM
For one thing, you need to find something that the US has its own production of - not just for the executions, but for hospital use for the entire countries.
That's what happened with the old injections. In Europe, capital punishment is considered a violation of the right to life, and medical companies supplying the drugs used will thus be considered complicit in the violation of human rights. Kinda almost like supporting Al Qaeda.
When legislators start threatening fines and possible jail time, these companies stop all shipments for the US, and US hospitals are suddenly without these drugs.
With the old drugs, it took years before the companies in question gave in, but don't expect it to take that long next time.