European companies cut off US supply of death penalty drugs

boing
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Back in the olden days, executions were performed in public and were surrounded by an air of entertainment. Sort of a cheap, sick circus. Society decided that was yucky, so executions were moved indoors, with limited viewing. But the methods - electrocution, cyanide gas, hanging, firing squad - were still too yucky. So now we have executions in something resembling an operating room, with a cocktail of chemicals calculated to deliver death in short order with minimal yuckiness, out of sight and mind of just about everyone. Except that it isn’t going as planned and now there are these inconvenient news stories about how a condemned man suffered from it.

Perhaps what is called for isn’t a clean, quiet, pleasant way of executing prisoners. Perhaps what we as a people should do is bring executions back out into the flinching eye of the public in a way that recaptures the barbaric circus of yore. Maybe carry them out in a football stadium. Everyone who buys a ticket gets a large mirror. The condemned appears on stage, in the middle of the stadium and is given a microphone. They then attempt to plead for mercy, do a standup act, sing, dance, whatever they can to mollify the crowd. Any spectator who is not favorably disposed to the condemned’s performance may vote by angling their mirror to direct a beam of sunlight onto the condemned. Once enough spectators beam their disapproval, the condemned runs for it, trying to evade the concentrated heat of ten thousand suns, as the crowd imprints the path of these evasions in a smouldering swath of scorched earth. Eventually, the ferocity of the sun claims the victim, and the crowd is treated to a near-instantaneous cremation, accompanied by a cloud of smoke that smells like a mixture of burned hair, bar-b-que, and a backed-up septic tank. This would enable us to gaze into our collective soul and see whether we approve of our collective barbarism. Our current preference of executions that are quiet, secret affairs is, arguably, even more barbaric.

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Depends on the caliber, the round, and how used.

Nearly anything to the back of the skull at a range of a foot or two will do the trick, albeit messily.

Interesting point about Torquemada: question is, was it considered moral AT THE TIME ? Morality changes over time, it wasn’t all that long ago that being gay, for example, or marrying between “races” was illegal, and both were generally considered moral and just at the time. . .

Applying the Retrospectroscope to events distant in history still gives a distorted view. . .

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I think it’s more like “I refuse to take any part in this process because I feel it is morally repugnant.”

Imagine an American company that manufactured lubricants found out that one of its customers was a despotic regime that bought their product for use in government-sponsored rape camps. Would the moral action be to refuse any further business with that client, or to continue business as usual under the rationale that lube-free rape would hurt even more?

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sounds like a short story in Analog.

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If you give someone enough of anything they’ll die eventually, but that doesn’t mean it is not cruel to do so. I think the reasoning for medication choice is to create a death that could not be ruled “cruel and unusual” punishment (activate cogdiss now!).

A barbituate followed by a paralytic followed by potassium kills by first inducing unconsciousness, then paralyzing the breathing muscles, then stopping the heart w the potassium (an electrolyte that stops heart muscle contraction in large enough doses). Thus the person does not feel pain or suffocation or whatever during this procedure. The sedation lasts longer than the paralysis, so you are dead before you could wake up, and they all work quickly.

To severely overdose someone with an opiod (fentanyl, morphine, heroin, etc) simply decreases their drive to breath. Eventually, with a large enough dose, they will mostly stop breathing. There are a few other side effects that increase the chances of death in very high doses, but that’s the general mechanicsm. They’ll be probably/mostly not aware of this. Like so many accidental heroin overdoses, they will usually breathe some, and gasp and sometimes choke.

This is when their friends in the world of heroin throw ice on them (to awaken them) or eventually call 911. It is not pretty, and some of the heroin people I have worked with DO remember what happened, but vaguely.

The addition in Ohio of Midazolam (aka Versed) seems an attempt to do several things: lower the needed dose of opiate, speed up the process through synergy, and create a less painful situation. Note I say seems, bc I sure didn’t write the protocol. Midazolam is a benzodiazapene, which cause short term sedation and also has the handy effect of inducing short term amnesia.

At the hospital, this can be a nice thing, bc you won’t necessarily remember the doctor performing your endoscopy, but you also won’t necessarily be asleep enough to make you stop breathing. In properly “conscious sedation” the procedure can be performed without cessation of breathing but also without discomfort to the patient, PLUS they won’t remember.

In reality, to stop someone’s breathing completely in one dose can take fairly enormous doses. One of the reasons hospitals like this drug combination for procedures is that there is a lot of wiggle room to get your dosing correct. It actually takes a lot of drug to seriously overdose someone to the point where you can not support them, plus both drugs have handy reversal agents (naaloxone and flumazenil).

Now that the world has heard that giving these drugs in combination is not a smooth and pretty death, can a condemned prisoner make the argument that this is a cruel way to kill someone, and therefor win a court’s favor to not be put to death? I’m not sure, but I bet you there are a few lawyers looking into this right now for their clients.

Your Handy Nurse,
the Fiat RN

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