Here be politics.
Jul. 29th, 2014 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dalesqlOpining about the current issues over the death penalty as currently practiced in the USA.
Putting the rest of this behind a cut.
Leaving aside the morality of having a death penalty at all, as that is a much bigger can of worms, I want to talk about the problems that the various states are having with the the chemicals used for lethal injection. For those who have not followed the issues, or are not as familiar with US law, a quick primer.
The US constitution forbids the government, state or federal, from inflicting "Cruel or unusual punishment". This was, back in the day, mainly aimed at the various execution methods that were essentially death by torture, and the various extra nasty ways that the European monarchs would imprison individuals who had pissed them off somehow.
Over the years, there have been various legal decisions and laws passed that variously prohibited different methods of execution. The lists of allowed execution methods vary by state, and the federal government has it's own list. In all the cases and laws I know about, the reason behind prohibiting method X was that method X was cruel or unusual or unreliable/ineffective.
So, in most states, the only methods that are currently allowed are lethal injection. Some states also still allow the firing squad, gas chamber, or electric chair. I'm focusing on lethal injection here.
The usual method of lethal injection is a two or three drug protocol. An IV is started, and first the inmate is given a strong anesthetic to put them deeply unconscious. Then a second drug is given that is an overdose quantity of a drug that will shut down breathing or the heart through different biochemical pathways. Then a third drug is given that shuts down the heart or breathing via a different biochemical pathway, in case the second drug is ineffective.
Well, various anti death penalty groups have asked to find out what the drugs used were, and they then take the list to the pharmaceutical makers and pressure them into not selling the drugs to the various states for use in executions. They have generally been successful as most pharmaceutical companies don't want the negative publicity promised by the anti-death penalty groups if they continue selling the drugs to the executioners. Some of them, I suppose, have owners that are genuinely opposed to the death penalty and would do this anyway, but I suspect most are caving in to the threat of negative publicity.
So the various states revised their execution drug protocols and tried to keep them secret. Anti death penalty groups or defense lawyers got the various states to disclose their new drug protocols using various legal shenanigans. They then take the new list to the pharmacutical makers and applied pressure to block these sales. Generally successfully.
So the various states passed laws requiring the drug protocol to remain secret, and that the state did not have to disclose the drugs used, under the pretext that the defense lawyer needed to verify the protocol was not cruel and unusual.
But now the states are having problems. The drugs that were most effective, swift and painless are now largely unavailable for sale to state executioners. This leaves the state with an array of drugs that are lethal, but rather less so, and take longer for the inmate's life to end, and are producing executions like the last few that have been conducted, where the unconscious inmate is obviously in physical distress, gasping for air and so on.
These executions are then publicized by the anti death penalty people as proof that lethal injection execution is cruel and unusual, and should be prohibited.
I have a solution to the problem. The various states already have vast quantities of illegal drugs that they have confiscated from criminal drug dealers. Heroin, cocaine, meth, and so on. Once these are no longer needed for the prosecution, they are routinely incinerated. Why don't the state executioners snag a couple kilos of heroin and cocaine, and use them as the execution drugs. Heroin is a powerful anesthetic, mix up a really strong dose to put them under. Then give them a whole lot more heroin, which kills by shutting down the brain to the point that it forgets to tell the lungs to keep breathing. Then give them a whole lot of cocaine, which kills by inducing cardiac fibrillation, which shuts down blood flow.
Anyway, that's my idea.
Putting the rest of this behind a cut.
Leaving aside the morality of having a death penalty at all, as that is a much bigger can of worms, I want to talk about the problems that the various states are having with the the chemicals used for lethal injection. For those who have not followed the issues, or are not as familiar with US law, a quick primer.
The US constitution forbids the government, state or federal, from inflicting "Cruel or unusual punishment". This was, back in the day, mainly aimed at the various execution methods that were essentially death by torture, and the various extra nasty ways that the European monarchs would imprison individuals who had pissed them off somehow.
Over the years, there have been various legal decisions and laws passed that variously prohibited different methods of execution. The lists of allowed execution methods vary by state, and the federal government has it's own list. In all the cases and laws I know about, the reason behind prohibiting method X was that method X was cruel or unusual or unreliable/ineffective.
So, in most states, the only methods that are currently allowed are lethal injection. Some states also still allow the firing squad, gas chamber, or electric chair. I'm focusing on lethal injection here.
The usual method of lethal injection is a two or three drug protocol. An IV is started, and first the inmate is given a strong anesthetic to put them deeply unconscious. Then a second drug is given that is an overdose quantity of a drug that will shut down breathing or the heart through different biochemical pathways. Then a third drug is given that shuts down the heart or breathing via a different biochemical pathway, in case the second drug is ineffective.
Well, various anti death penalty groups have asked to find out what the drugs used were, and they then take the list to the pharmaceutical makers and pressure them into not selling the drugs to the various states for use in executions. They have generally been successful as most pharmaceutical companies don't want the negative publicity promised by the anti-death penalty groups if they continue selling the drugs to the executioners. Some of them, I suppose, have owners that are genuinely opposed to the death penalty and would do this anyway, but I suspect most are caving in to the threat of negative publicity.
So the various states revised their execution drug protocols and tried to keep them secret. Anti death penalty groups or defense lawyers got the various states to disclose their new drug protocols using various legal shenanigans. They then take the new list to the pharmacutical makers and applied pressure to block these sales. Generally successfully.
So the various states passed laws requiring the drug protocol to remain secret, and that the state did not have to disclose the drugs used, under the pretext that the defense lawyer needed to verify the protocol was not cruel and unusual.
But now the states are having problems. The drugs that were most effective, swift and painless are now largely unavailable for sale to state executioners. This leaves the state with an array of drugs that are lethal, but rather less so, and take longer for the inmate's life to end, and are producing executions like the last few that have been conducted, where the unconscious inmate is obviously in physical distress, gasping for air and so on.
These executions are then publicized by the anti death penalty people as proof that lethal injection execution is cruel and unusual, and should be prohibited.
I have a solution to the problem. The various states already have vast quantities of illegal drugs that they have confiscated from criminal drug dealers. Heroin, cocaine, meth, and so on. Once these are no longer needed for the prosecution, they are routinely incinerated. Why don't the state executioners snag a couple kilos of heroin and cocaine, and use them as the execution drugs. Heroin is a powerful anesthetic, mix up a really strong dose to put them under. Then give them a whole lot more heroin, which kills by shutting down the brain to the point that it forgets to tell the lungs to keep breathing. Then give them a whole lot of cocaine, which kills by inducing cardiac fibrillation, which shuts down blood flow.
Anyway, that's my idea.
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 02:14 am (UTC)Considering the issues they've been having with the current drugs, cocaine and heroin seem like a reasonable alternative. You're dead either way, why on earth should we punish you more by making the last moments of your life awful...no matter what you did to "deserve" the punishment?
Frankly I'm still amazed we live in a country where execution by firing squad and hanging is an option...and that there are states where you can choose how you die. What a grim decision to come to.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 08:23 am (UTC)I'm in favor of the death penalty, but it should be rare and fully justified beyond the shadow of a doubt. Because there are some individuals who are just too freaking dangerous to be allowed to continue even inside a prison with a life without parole sentence.
Something that texas recently started doing is having a Conviction Integrity Unit in the state prosecutors office. They are going back and retesting evidence in cases with modern methods that were not available at the time of trial. In practice, this is mostly DNA testing, but that may change. They just released a guy after 20 years of a life sentence in a rape/murder case, when DNA showed it wasn't him. I hope that other states enact similar units.