Some Lethal Injections May Have Been 'Excruciating’

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-092706lethal,0,3945772.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Inmates executed by lethal injection in California may have been conscious when they were administered a drug that induces suffocation and an "excruciating'' experience comparable to drowning or strangulation, an anesthesiologist who has reviewed state execution logs testified today.

Mark Heath, a professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University Medical School, said the logs showed that some of those executed were still breathing several minutes after prison personnel administered pancuronium bromide, a paralytic agent and the second of three drugs used in lethal injections in California and three dozen other states.

"If someone is breathing like that, they may not be in a deep plane of anesthesia. They may not even be unconscious,'' Heath said on the second day of a hearing before U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on a challenge to California's lethal injection procedures by death row inmate Michael Morales.

His attorneys contend that the state procedure violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. As Heath was testifying, attorney Ginger Anders displayed a copy of a prison log of the execution of Robert Massey, which showed that Massey continued to breathe for four minutes after the pancuronium was administered

[benddem]

1. hey but

this is a country that loves torture.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

2. I am against capital punishment myself but...

what exactly is the point of lethal injection? it seems like an extremely complicated process for untrained prison guards to be administering?

I mean if your going to kill them - why not just stick a shotgun in their mouth?

[depakid]

3. I would personlly prefer a firing squad

Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather die like a man than be put down like an animal.

[zonkers]

4. You should be allowwed to have a classic French Foreign Legion firing

squad, complete with optional blindfold and cigarette.

[Ian David]

6. I think high-explosives strapped to your head would be more humane

It would pulverize the entire brain all at once, at the speed of sound.

[Nye Bevan]

7. That would probably rule out an open casket, however... (nt)

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Yeah...if executions MUST be carried out...

it seems that the most humane methods of doing so would be decapitation (guillotine), hanging with the 'English drop' (rope length determined by the weight of the condemned, and the knot placed behind the left ear so that the force of the drop cleanly snaps the neck at the 5th cervical vertebra), or a firing squad with trained marksmen. All of these result in a quick and (as far as possible) painless death, unlike more modern and supposedly more humane methods like the electric chair (the first man executed by this method basically roasted to death) and lethal injection.

Of course, public opinion may eventually lead to abolition of capital punishment in the US; more and more people are coming to see it as a barbaric practice with no place in a civilised society.

[foo_bar]

13. the jury's out on the guillotine

From what I've read (Hardy Boy novels and The Scarlet Pimpernel), it was more humane for the audience than the bouncing head. There's something like 15 to 20 seconds before the head stops trying to think of comebacks, which is the definition of psychic torture ("Johnny Got His Gun"). The main thing going for the guillotine was efficiency, like the cotton gin.

Lethal injections could be more "humane" (dogs have it better in some states, like tranquilizers with the sodium pentathol), but then it wouldn't be "capital punishment" just capital euthanasia. It's funny how they swab the prisoner's arm with antiseptic, like it's a medical procedure until the hand-off to the warden.

[FILAM23]

9. I've always thought they should die the same way as their victims

in the case of multiple victims with more then one method used then
the most painful method should be employed

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. You need professional help. -nt

[DavidDvorkin]

8. Freepers are masturbating to this report

[FILAM23]

10. It is not only freepers who support

the death penalty and believe murderers should suffer

[zreosumgame]

15. including those wrongly convicted?

there is always that hard fact to consider.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

18. Tell me what are the harmful effects of their death being painless. -nt

[Guaranteed]

11. I don't understand why they don't just OD them on heroin.

I'm against C.P. to begin with, but you wouldn't think that anyone could complain about going like that.

[allisonthegreat]

12. nobody knows

Because you can't wake up the dead and ask them. Certainly I imagine the gas chamber or the electric chair certainly more inhumane. I am against the death penalty as a general rule, but have a hard time not justifying it on some kind of crimes.

[fedsron2us]

14. Given the choice

I think I would opt for the old Stalinist method of execution which was a bullet to the back of the head from close range. Of course, I would want to skip the beatings and torture that usually preceded it.

[Zhade]

16. Yet another reason to be against the death penalty...

...as all clear-thinking people should be.

[MnFats]

17. the muscles are paralyzed. How do we know..

...that the condemned would not be screaming in excrutiating agony....if only he could?

and given that the machinery of death is operated by fallible humans....


capital punishment MUST be eliminated...it's barbaric...

[greccogirl]

20. Please. People are put to sleep every minute for surgery. In any event

it is a sure bet it is more humane that what their victims felt.