Is Death by Lethal Injection Cruel and Unusual

Seems to me, they have a method they use on beef in the slaughterhouse that we should leverage.

There, the cow is going down a chute. An arm comes down, a blast of compressed air knocks them on the noodle with a steel peg and they are dead. The same thing for a human might work, but then someone would survive the first wack and they'd declare that method bad. We can leverage this concept though.

If it's legal for the doc to stick a pair of scissors in the skull of a baby and suck out the brain, can't we use the same process for the death row inmate?

Ok, so they'd feel pain with the scissor injection and all that, but back to the way they kill cows in the slaughterhouse, but modified.

Can't we have some gizmo that in a flash scrambles their noodle. For instance, put a nozzle with 5000psi to their temple. At go time, give a short burst. It would break the skin, decimate the entire brain all in about 2/10 of a second. There would be no brain left to register pain. The cost of this thing should be cheap enough.

The only thing inhumane about the current method is to the family of the victim of the original crime. Everyone sits around feeling bad for this guy who molested their daughter before burying her alive.. Forget that, let's get the show on the road.

 

I'm for death by what ever method they used on their victim. That should not be considered cruel or unusual since they have already experienced this form of death through proxy. JMO

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Keithnteri @ May 4 2007, 02:39 PM) [snapback]435581[/snapback]</div>

I second that! (Though it'll never happen. Too many compassionate lefties around. Too bad they weren't around when the monster was committing his crime.)

As to the OP question, I'd say no, with the possible exception of the Angel Diaz execution, which is what I presume prompted the question. STP, pancuronium, and KCl are all quite noxious to tissue, and can do pretty severe damage if injected via an infiltrated IV.

 

I'm kind of with David on this one, if we are to execute a person for a capital crime, why not use their organs for some good? With people waiting for kidney, heart, liver, etc. transplants, to me it would seem to be some good come from an otherwise wasted life. With lethal injection however, I doubt this is possible.

 

Leaving aside the issue of being for or against the death penalty and focusing strictly on the organ transplant issue, when our medical technology becomes capable of complete nervous system transplantation, including all or some of the brain (to restore lost capabilities to victims of strokes, etc.), would you support the use of a freshly killed prisoner's brain and nervous system as part of the general donor package made available?

Or would you worry that there'd be some risk of the prisoner's "criminal essence" being transplanted?

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

On using organs from the executed, hasn't China been accused of doing that?

 

So why do they clean the site to give a lethal injection. I mean in normal circumstances it prevents infection but we are talking lethal injection. I think the injection is worse that the germs.

Oh going to sleep and not feeling anything to me is not cruel compared to the other means of execution.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Delta Flyer @ May 4 2007, 04:54 PM) [snapback]435661[/snapback]</div>

Other way around: there have been reports of prisoners being executed solely to make their organs available for transplant.

 

hmm, lessee. a likely painful and violent death is set right somehow by essentially putting someone to sleep? sounds not cruel and unusual ENOUGH to me. but i'm kind of a hardass on people who destroy the lives of others willfully...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IAO @ May 4 2007, 02:48 PM) [snapback]435679[/snapback]</div>

It is not quite going to sleep and not feeling anything.

 

Because the person can't move or scream does not mean he isn't in pain. The basis of the cruelty charges is that the cocktail of drugs could be causing pain and we don't know it. So the alternative is to create a cocktail of drugs that we are sure will not bring physical pain to the person being killed.

The philosophical concept of "Pain" is not just the transient physical pain, but also the fear and dread of knowing that the physical pain is coming. That's why ethicists will argue about whether or not fish experience "pain" when they are caught by the fisherman, with the traditional understanding that the fish does not experience "pain", even though it may be hurt in the experience.

The inmate facing execution most definitely does experience pain in the philosophical sense, so we have to decide if that's what we really want. I remember reading a SciFi short story that featured what the author thought was a more humane method ... the inmate was put in a room, and told that if he didn't die in 2 minutes, he could simply open the door and walk out. For two minutes, he was in terror, but then hearing the timer "ding", realized he had a new lease on life. Smiling, he would walk over to the door and grasp the door knob, only to have it deliver a powerful killing dose of some futuristic drug. No transient physical pain, and also no "pain" for years and years of living on death row waiting for life to end.

Would it be better for them to not know, and to flood their cell with poison while they sleep one night, unaware?

 

I think it would be nice to let a violent criminal die in just the way that they inflicted upon their victim(s), if it weren't for the fact that someone else would have to become that violent criminal in order to carry out the sentence. That's more cruel and unusual to the executioner than it is to the criminal.

And to extend that just a little, we as a society become guilty of supporting, or at least allowing such violent acts to happen. It may be fair punishment for the criminal, but I think it degrades the rest of us.

In a 100% foolproof system that is never wrong about convicting and sentencing criminals, I would have no problem with such criminals facing the fear of death for an extended time (other than the resources used to keep that person alive for all that time). If I were executioner, I think I'd have an easier time administering a lethal injection than electrocution, hanging, beheading or other methods because I'd consider it as if I were just "turning off" a very bad person, rather than trying by proxy to inflict some sort of painful revenge and getting my own hands dirty at the same time.

p.s. Read a short story by Orson Scott Card called "A Thousand Deaths" for some interesting methods of execution. The story can be found in an anthology book called "Maps in a Mirror"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Keithnteri @ May 4 2007, 01:39 PM) [snapback]435581[/snapback]</div>

I think it's generally agreed upon that most criminals, especially those who commit more serious and violent crimes, don't sit around, check the law to see what sort of punishment awaits them if they're caught, and then decide if they're willing to risk it and commit the crime...

Said another way: Capital punishment makes the victims feel good, after the fact, but does not generally deter the commission of violent crimes. Period.

So if it makes you feel better to chop off some guy's head and store him in a freezer for a while (or whatever (s)he did to his/her victims), perhaps you might want to consider why you feel this way in the first place.

Do you think we should televise this sort of thing? And would it be free, or pay per view? And where would the money go? To the family of the victim? For better prison programs that reduce the number of repeat visits...? To pay for the current War?

-------

Dr. Berman, this is the old: "answer yes or no to this question: is this the first time you've beaten your wife?" joke all over again. The assumption here seems to be that there are certain kinds of capital punishment which are "kind and usual." And I'm just not seeing it this way.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Keithnteri @ May 4 2007, 01:39 PM) [snapback]435581[/snapback]</div>

I agree. Why should we treat killers well? They are cruel to the victims!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mcsj @ May 7 2007, 04:51 PM) [snapback]437115[/snapback]</div>

Because it's a reflection of who **we** are, if you must ask.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IsrAmeriPrius @ May 4 2007, 11:53 PM) [snapback]435854[/snapback]</div>

I was unaware they did it this way. I thought they used anesthetic to put the person under and then administer the lethal dose. I know potassium burns badly at the administration site. That is why we use warm compresses and try to place the iv in a large vein to reduce irritation as we replace potassium in a patient.

To mush potassium disrupts the potassium sodium exchange in the hart effectively killing the person. pancuronium bromide is a paralytic used to paralyze a patient for intubation or to keep them from twitching during surgery.

I thought they would use other sedative drugs that actually cause the person to be unconscious. Something like a Propofol drip or Ativan drip. Before they gave any lethal dosage of a drug.



*edit*
The usual dose range for induction of anesthesia using thiopentone is from 3 to 7 mg/kg. This drug is an used before general anesthetic. So I would say that unless the person is over 500 pounds this is more than enough and is in itself probably lethal.

They also use 3 grams of this drug according to the article you linked.
3grams= 3000 mg a 180 pound male would under normal medical conditions get 572.72mg max

 

pharmacokinetics is your friend. using a __ gram dose rather than a __ mg/kg dose is just a bad idea unless the grams is going to be in the vast majority of cases above and beyond what it would take to knock you out. this sounds like a simple problem of someone not knowing what the hell they're talking about and picking an arbitrary number. it's not like they're going to try to bring them back, why not just pick an overdose number on the anesthesia and if you want redundancy pick one other lethal drug?

though from iao's clinical numbers (hey i just deal with development and characterization, not clinical dosages of specific drugs!) it sounds like that number is an overdose for most people. i'd have to look up the specifics myself, and i don't have enough battery time to do that right now.

i can understand the redundancy issue, some labs on campus euthanize lab animals with co2, and they are required to do a secondary measure to ensure that the animal is no longer alive- because with an insufficient dose they can recover. same principle.

 

Personally, I'm on the George Carlin bandwagon of criminal justice:
Fence off Kansas, and stick all violent criminals in there - no police or guards or supplies or parole, just automatic weapons. Put it on cable TV and get corporate sponsorship
Next, put the sex criminals in Wyoming... Same deal, you get it up on cable
Drug addicts get put in Colorado, and on top of it we'll even air drop all the drugs we catch on the street. Once again, on cable.
Finally, maniacs and crazy people get put in Utah, and their antics get put on cable, of course.

This means that all 4 groups of our most interesting and dangerous people are all in one area, surrounded by electric fences. But that's not much fun... so we'll put some gates between the areas! Once a month the gates will open briefly, and the prisoners can mingle... This stuff goes on Pay Per View!

It pays for itself

But seriously... Lethal injection is, IMO, too humane a way of executing some of these people. They say let the punishment fit the crime - for the more violent nasty people who get the death penalty, screw the "last meal" and all that. Throw them into some dark, dank, drippy cell and let them rot for a few weeks, then bury the corpse. Or just knock them out, stick them in a coffin, and bury them like that... nice and easy, no mess. It'll give those bastards a chance to feel the fear and horror they inflicted on others.