|
Post by nils on Jul 26, 2014 8:50:07 GMT -6
We still don't know where the drugs came from.
We know they used midazolam and hydromorphone. We know the combination was experimental. And now we know that instead of working, the drugs took nearly two hours to kill Joseph Wood, as he snorted and gasped for air 660 times.
Within a couple hours of Mr. Wood's death, the state of Arizona started damage control. Last night, Governor Jan Brewer called for an investigation into why the execution had taken so long, but she also released a statement saying: "by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer."
That's not what the reporters who were in the room have written. "It was very disturbing to watch... liked a fish on shore gulping for air," Troy Hayden told The Arizona Republic.
One hour and 57 minutes is horrifically long, even when compared to the recent botched execution of Clayton Lockett, who writhed in pain for 45 minutes while the state of Oklahoma struggled to kill him in May.
It's time to ask the question: How is it possible that, in 2014, state after state is utterly failing at lethal injection? How can it be, given modern medicine, that it could take hours instead of minutes for states to kill someone?
The answer is that the death penalty simply has no place in this country. As method after method of state-sponsored killing has been deemed barbaric and archaic, states are left scrambling to invent new ways to execute.
Lethal injection started as a seemingly more humane alternative to the gas chamber, the electric chair, and firing squads. But as companies both in the U.S. and in Europe have refused to let the drugs they produce be used in executions, lethal injection has become what is essentially medical experimentation, with novel drugs and doses leading to botched execution after botched execution.
Lethal injection is not modern medicine. Executioners do not have proper training, leading to some prisoners being conscious but paralyzed as they slowly asphyxiate. States are fumbling to find drugs, concocting different combinations every time. In the case of Mr. Wood's execution, the state used a two-drug combination that had been used only once before, when the state of Ohio took 25 minutes to kill Dennis McGuire.
And these killing experiments are being carried out in secrecy. The hours before Mr. Woods was strapped to the gurney were a frenzied attempt to figure out where the drugs came from before they could be shot into his vein. We still don't know.
The greater problem underlying the horrific executions we have recently seen is not lethal injection or a matter of simply getting the drugs right. The execution of the innocent, the shameful role of race, mentally ill defendants, poor defense lawyering, and prosecutors who hide the truth – these are the problems that make the death penalty completely inappropriate in the modern world. Yet we continue to slowly pick off killing methods that are simply too barbaric to condone, but the truth is that there is no way for states – for our government – to kill someone that is in line with the type of country we want to be.
Today, my heart is with Jeanne Brown and all of those who loved Debra Dietz. My thoughts are with the executioners who will have to live with the horrific botch they carried out yesterday. This entire story is a tragic one, and it should push us to admit that the path to justice simply cannot include more gruesome violence.
It's time for a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty.
BEST WISHES NILS
|
|
|
Post by whitediamonds on Jul 26, 2014 14:46:57 GMT -6
Maybe we should have a global moratorium on euthanasia too. Kill the pain not the patient. False mercy.
|
|
|
Post by rick4404 on Jul 26, 2014 19:08:03 GMT -6
Naturally, an execution shouldn't take two hours. I agree with the others that the inmate is dead, and that's the purpose of an execution, is it not? We wouldn't be at this point if states didn't have to scramble to find alternative drugs to execute inmates with; because the primary suppliers of the more widely-used chemicals such as sodium thiopental and pentobarbital are no longer making their products available to prisons for execution purposes. Would Arizona ever bring the gas chamber out of mothballs? Technically, it is still a method of execution that is available to inmates who were sentenced to die prior to 1992, but Donald Harding and Walter LaGrand were the last two inmates executed by lethal gas in Arizona; all subsequent executions have been via lethal injection.
|
|
|
Post by nils on Jul 27, 2014 0:49:14 GMT -6
Naturally, an execution shouldn't take two hours. I agree with the others that the inmate is dead, and that's the purpose of an execution, is it not? We wouldn't be at this point if states didn't have to scramble to find alternative drugs to execute inmates with; because the primary suppliers of the more widely-used chemicals such as sodium thiopental and pentobarbital are no longer making their products available to prisons for execution purposes. Would Arizona ever bring the gas chamber out of mothballs? Technically, it is still a method of execution that is available to inmates who were sentenced to die prior to 1992, but Donald Harding and Walter LaGrand were the last two inmates executed by lethal gas in Arizona; all subsequent executions have been via lethal injection. Hi Rick. Pls understand the good reason for drug companies refusing to participate in killing human beings. This is what US drug company Hospira had to say, “we have always publicly objected to the use of any of our products in capital punishment,” and shut down the direct sale of drugs the manufacurer learned might be added to future lethal injection protocols to prison hospitals. My best wishes Nils
|
|
|
Post by whitediamonds on Jul 29, 2014 11:14:47 GMT -6
What I do not get is" if we use anesthesia for someone going thru surgery, they break bones, open the chest, etc. We feel no pain for hours or awareness.
|
|
|
Post by Donnie on Jul 29, 2014 17:40:33 GMT -6
Having watched two people die of cancer, I know that this is a phony issue. Hospira cares about public relations for the squeaky wheels, not about overall benefit or harm to humanity.
|
|
|
Post by nils on Jul 30, 2014 2:46:37 GMT -6
Having watched two people die of cancer, I know that this is a phony issue. Hospira cares about public relations for the squeaky wheels, not about overall benefit or harm to humanity.
What I do not get is" if we use anesthesia for someone going thru surgery, they break bones, open the chest, etc. We feel no pain for hours or awareness.What you dont seem to understand, Donnie and Whitediamond, is that The drug companies dont want to participate in Homicide however legal that Homicide may be. I am not sure the drug companies gain much credit in America, since support for the DP, alwhougt withering, is still strong. My best wishes from Europe Nils.
|
|
|
Post by whitediamonds on Jul 30, 2014 9:54:45 GMT -6
Having watched two people die of cancer, I know that this is a phony issue. Hospira cares about public relations for the squeaky wheels, not about overall benefit or harm to humanity.
What I do not get is" if we use anesthesia for someone going thru surgery, they break bones, open the chest, etc. We feel no pain for hours or awareness.What you dont seem to understand, Donnie and Whitediamond, is that The drug companies dont want to participate in Homicide however legal that Homicide may be. I am not sure the drug companies gain much credit in America, since support for the DP, alwhougt withering, is still strong. My best wishes from Europe Nils. Our new little member Brittney always say's man makes the laws,, what I find barbaric is how many abortions going on is ok "on demand", euthanasia is killing the patient not the pain... Some hate abortions so much, they bomb the clinic's threats to kill them, euthanasia is a slippery slope under the pretense of mercy" is abortion mercy too? Drug companies would be under the threats of being killed too. Anti's prove they are just fine with torture & killing , even the recent execution it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off by the defense" is such a digusting thing they put that guy thru themselves. Yes, man makes laws to fit our " lifestyle" so easily, yet when one illegally murders does not matter how many save their azz....
|
|
|
Post by Donnie on Aug 9, 2014 8:41:42 GMT -6
What you dont seem to understand, Donnie and Whitediamond, is that The drug companies dont want to participate in Homicide however legal that Homicide may be. I am not sure the drug companies gain much credit in America, since support for the DP, alwhougt withering, is still strong. My best wishes from Europe Nils. I understand far more than you do. Their drugs are used in homicide everyday. In the US alone, more than 100,000 people per year are the victims of homicide caused by medical errors, many involve use of drugs.
|
|