Firing squad or poison gas: America hunts for new death penalty

A botched lethal injection has led to a row that some say is a final nail in the coffin of capital punishment


Tim Walker Author Biography
Los Angeles
Sunday 25 May 2014

A severe shortage of lethal injection drugs, and the horribly botched execution of a convicted murderer in Oklahoma, have brought the debate over the death penalty in the US back to the fore, once again.

During his execution by lethal injection on the evening of 29 April, Clayton Lockett, 38, writhed and gasped on the gurney several minutes after a doctor had declared him unconscious. The execution was halted, only for Lockett to die of a heart attack shortly afterwards.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court stayed the execution by lethal injection of a Missouri death row inmate, 46-year-old Russell Bucklew, after lawyers claimed that he, too, could suffer a painful and prolonged death. On the same day, in Tennessee, the Republican governor, Bill Haslam, signed a law reinstating electrocution as a method of execution, if the necessary drugs for a lethal injection cannot be obtained. The law was passed by large majorities in the state's upper and lower houses.

The drugs used in lethal injections have become increasingly scarce after the EU introduced a sweeping ban on their export to death-penalty states in the US. The ban and subsequent shortage has significantly slowed the rate of executions, but it has also led states to consider other methods of execution – and to experiment with untested drug combinations, often made up of drugs from unidentified and largely unregulated "compounding pharmacies", which mix small batches for specific purposes.

Long considered the most humane form of capital punishment, lethal injection has come under scrutiny following several troubling incidents. During his execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma, in January, 38-year-old Michael Wilson's reported last words were: "I feel my whole body burning." In Ohio, in the same month, Dennis McGuire, 53, snorted and gasped repeatedly during the 26 minutes it took him to die. Oklahoma officials said Lockett's execution was bungled because the inmate's vein collapsed during the injection.

There have been no executions carried out by any US state since Lockett's shocking demise, but Bucklew's last-minute reprieve marked the second time in as many weeks that a death row prisoner had his lethal injection postponed. Convicted murderer Robert Campbell had been due to die in Texas on 13 May, but a court halted it at the 11th hour.

Though the Supreme Court did not detail its reasons for delaying Bucklew's execution, many observers believe the Lockett case was instrumental in the ruling. "It was surely on their minds," said Richard Dieter, the president of the Death Penalty Information Centre. "The Lockett case has had a noticeable effect: executions have been stayed, and now states are edging away from lethal injection."

The complications now surrounding the application of lethal injection have reportedly prompted a Wyoming legislative committee to draft a bill calling for the reintroduction of the firing squad.

In Utah, where Representative Paul Ray, a Republican, hopes to introduce a similar proposal, the last execution by firing squad occurred as recently as 2010. The practice was discontinued in 2004, but those sentenced to death before then could still choose it as an alternative.

In Louisiana, the prisons chief James LeBlanc recently suggested that the state consider nitrogen asphyxiation as a more reliably "humane" method than lethal injection. The last gas chamber execution in the US took place in 1999.

Professor Deborah Denno, an expert on execution methods at the Fordham University Law School in New York, said: "There is a contingent that believes we will eventually find a perfect method of execution … [but] in a lot of cases, it's nothing to do with the drugs. It's to do with the executioners' incompetence."

Overall, the death penalty remains in 32 US states, though only 10 have carried out executions in recent years. US courts imposed 80 death sentences last year, down from 315 in 1994. There were 39 executions in 2013, compared to 98 in 1999.

"The shortage of lethal injection drugs is another nail in the coffin of the death penalty," said Mr Dieter. "In people's minds, the death penalty is now associated with executing the innocent and botched executions."

Method of dispatch

Lethal injection The primary method of execution used by all 32 states that still have the death penalty. There have been more than 1,200 executions using injections since 1976. Sodium thiopental puts inmates to sleep followed by potassium chloride which stops the heart.

Electrocution Eight US states still use the electric chair. First built in 1888, prisoners are blindfolded and then given a 30-second jolt of electricity between 500 and 2,000 volts.

Gas chamber Introduced in 1924, and still used in Arizona, Missouri and Wyoming. This method uses hydrogen cyanide gas delivered into a chamber. The prisoner dies from hypoxia, the cutting-off of oxygen to the brain.

Hanging The primary execution method in the US until the 1890s. Three prisoners have been executed by hanging since 1976 and it is still authorised in Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington.

Firing squad Remains a method of execution in Utah if chosen by a prisoner sentenced before 2004.

Zander Swinburne
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/firing-squad-or-poison-gas-america-hunts-for-new-death-penalty-9431999.html

What ever method they used to kill their victims.

So many different views on such a touchy subject, you could start by asking "should there be capital punishment in the first place?"

My first instinct is no, then I read reaction's like this



and you have to think, some of these perpetrators are simply sick Moral Less puppies that maybe don't deserve to breath the same air , some of the sick crimes that have been committed forces the need to be rid of these fucktards.

And at the risk of contradicting myself , should repeat pedophiles be allowed to live ? I mean if you have proven beyond a doubt that some sick puppy has committed the unspeakable to children, do they deserve the death penalty or use Roar #1 analogy and give them the same torture as their victims ?

So yeah, if you have to have the death penalty, then the perpetrator should suffer the same fate of their victim ( yes I know this makes us no better then him/her, but hey, they started it ).

This should bring out a few primitive viewpoints…….

How about you just lock up all violent criminals and sex offenders for life? That way there is no need for a death penalty and the public can be kept safe.

Like take their life away without taking their life away. Still works for me, as I said "So yeah, if you have to have the death penalty" I actually didn't back having it, I was suggesting that if you are going to have it the punishment should fit the crime

You establish a very grave precedent when you cede to the state the right to take someone's life.

The murderer thought it was his right to take someone's life, but the state can't do that to him?

People who murder others or molest children should be kept alive. Either lock them up in solitary confinement or embarrass them because that's what they deserve.

Killing them makes the state no better than the murderer, and letting the rapist go because he has 'Reverend' in front his name shows how warped collective morality is in some places.

Nothing like a good stoning, to be honest.

Yes.

I just find it so hard to justify murder in any context.

Let them rot.

I don't believe in capital punishment . What does that do? It doesn't bring back the victim , the victims family won't have closure , the guilty ' family won't have closure as well. Hell don't get me started on the innocent who get executed and the family only get an apology . Let them rot in prison

One of the problems with State sanctioned executions is what happens when you make a mistake and get it wrong...and they've executed the wrong person more than once...

:cool:

that's my reasoning too, 4% of death row inmates I believe. The fact that isn't 0% is sickening.

I personally don't have a moral obligation with killing murderers, rapists or what have you. But the fact innocent people get killed, and it doesn't even deter crime has me against it.

Sadly, crime and punishment will always cost tax payers. I don't think there is much we can do about apart from making inmates work whilst in jail. I know a few jails have factories that they put the inmates to work on, like in making number plates etc.

Capital punishment doesn't really make it cheaper cos the average inmate spends about 10-20 years on death row anyway.

Firing squad.

This, when someone's life is at stake almost always the accused will use every legal avenue available before they go to their death, so on top of usual prison costs there are the additional legal costs that are attached. So the costs issue doesn't usually hold up...unless you adopt a Vietnam War approach.



Edited by imonfourfourtwo: 25/5/2014 09:53:06 PM

Crucifixion or scaphism.

Are there any women here?

Prison for life. But use them for regular psych studies.

Just let them build roads or something.

Its a tad long, but it does have a answer as to cost of executing a prisoner in America.
Its also funny.

[youtube]Kye2oX-b39E[/youtube]

In fact, in the US, Jails are a lucrative source of income due to having a basically unpaid workforce to perform manufacturing jobs ...



http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289

Edited by petszk: 26/5/2014 12:29:19 PM

Why they don't do that in Aus with detention centres is beyond me.

-PB

interesting video and debunk a fair few myths about the death penalty .

Now just from a scientific perspective I'm not sure how they can't get this lethal injection thing to work.

If you've ever been prepped for an operation you'll know the anaesthetist knocks you out in 6 seconds flat. Junkies seem to OD all the time from a heroin overdoses so wouldn't it just be a case then of pumping knocked out bloke full of herion, morphine or some other mad drug?

Obviously it's more difficult than that but I'd be interested to know why they can't do it this way. Where's that doctor bloke that's on this forum.

The fact that the justice system is fallible means any other debate is moot- it is completely unethical and amoral to have a capital punishment system.

If you allow it for cases with "absolutely no doubt" what constitutes this line of no doubt will keep being pushed back until you are in the same place as now where innocent people are being killed. Remember, everyone who is executed now is considered to be guilty beyond reasonable doubt... until it turns out they weren't.

Capital punishment is proven to not be a deterrent, and proven to be eminently fallible. It is a relic of a less developed society that needs to be consigned to the history books.

Edited by Scoll: 26/5/2014 01:02:09 PM