The More You Know

h/t Miguel

 

Two cinematic deaths. One pretty effing brutal, especially by 1972 (or any other year's) standards. The other painless and peaceful.

I brought that up because of this:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. - Amendment VIII, United States Constitution (1791)

The question came up at all in comment discussion at Gun Free Zone because people don't know, don't understand, or don't care about the details regarding legal execution, and most folks have no idea how it's done.

By the numbers:

1) Sedative: (Valium, Versed, etc.) Subject is sent to chemical Oblivion, beyond responding to pain. This is key. If they're not pain-free, you're executing someone cruelly, which is a violation of the 8th amendment to the US Constitution. This includes using outdated or impotent drugs literally past their freshness and efficacy date. Do it right, and it's the Final Big Nap.

2) Paralytic: (succinylcholine) Subject's muscles of respiration are paralyzed completely. Breathing, and any attempt at same, is switched off in a couple of seconds. Paralysis in about 2-3 seconds. Brain death begins at about 6 minutes, and total irreversible body-wide cellular death in 15 minutes.

3) Electrolyte: (potassium chloride) Subject's heart muscle receives a massive overdose of potassium, which switches it off like a light switch within a couple of seconds after administration.

You have to do it in this order. If you don't make it painless, it's cruel punishment, at a Dr. Mengele level of performance. If you turn the heart off first, there's no circulation to move the succinylcholine around in order to paralyze the breathing muscles, and they flop around unconscious, gasping agonally for breath, and take longer to die, all the while looking like a fish out of water, while yet unconscious. With designated press representatives watching, by law and custom, every grisly detail.

Do it the right way, and you turn off their mind (and pain perception), then their ability to breathe or move at all, then finally switch off the heart muscle. Death is inevitable, rapid, and peaceful. And looks like Yoda's passage into the afterlife, rather than Luca Brasi's.

Which is why SCOTUS lets you do it, and the media can't really say f**k-all about the actual mechanics of the process.

But botch it, and give them someone wide awake while being suffocated, and then inducing cardiac arrest via a painful electrolyte injection, or leave them with someone flopping around and gasping for their last breaths like Luca, and that will be the last legally-sanctioned execution you see in probably anyone's lifetime. Game. Set. Match.

(And yes, I have given and do give all three medications regularly, just not to the same person at the same time, and usually not in the dosage necessary nor with any intent to induce the results described above. But I know my sh*t, so I know what I'm trying to not do, in most instances. Giving #2, sux, being the exception, because we want to paralyze your breathing to make insertion of an ET tube possible and easy for the doctor for a few seconds, all the while a respiratory therapist is ready to start bagging you or hooking your new breathing tube to a mechanical ventilator and oxygen.)

Now you know how they do what they do, and why it's done that way, as opposed to something like slitting open their abdomen, tying off one end of their intestines to a solid anchor, and kicking them out the window on an upper floor, and leaving them to twist slowly at the end of their own innards, fully awake, until they expire.