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 This includes using outdated or impotent drugs literally past their freshness and efficacy date.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.
I don't know why they don't let the vets do it. I have seen dogs just go straight to sleep and that is it.
ReplyDeleteI believe we need to hear the screaming and groans, moans and clicks...
ReplyDeleteWho cares if the chemicals are cancer causing somewhere in the future. Why would anyone care if these scumbags suffer? They sure didn't give a dam about their victims. In a lot of cases they took GREAT joy in giving pain for long periods.
ReplyDeleteExecutions should be televised or made public like in other countries, it does act as a deterent factor there. I have witnessed executions in a couple countries where parents bring their kids to show them what happens when you commit crimes, its done much more efficient there.
How about deterrence to make these POS's think about what will happen to them if caught?
To simplify things why not just kill them in the same way they killed their victims or give the families of the victim the choice of how they go out?
Or just use the Saudi or French methods of off with their heads, no more wasting time worrying about the method used and how long it takes. End of story...
While this insight is, perhaps, callous the language clearly denotes that the punishment be cruel AND unusual - not OR. If it suddenly became commonplace both conditions would no longer be met which would render it no longer meeting this strict interpretation.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, your post made me think of the nurse in Tennessee that gave vecuronium instead of versed and then left a patient to suffocate to death.
ReplyDeleteGuillotine
ReplyDelete9mm base of the skull
.45 between the eyes
At any rate, if someone is deserving of the death penalty why should anyone give a flying fuck if it hurts?
I wonder if you could mask them up, then hit them with an increasing % of nitrous oxide until they suffocate?
ReplyDelete1chota, your first sentence "let the vets do it" made many an old soldier do some wishful thinking... praying for it even. But I see you meant something else... an old guy can dream...
ReplyDeleteLiterally what the vet & techs did to my last cocker. God Bless Clementine, she was dying but she wasn't. It was easy on her because the vet & company were compassionate and caring. I was a train wreck by the time we got to #3. I can live with this decision because she was wiggling her tail and happy at step one. I ask my dogs to do a lot of things; but I don't ask them to suffer. Life is precious and 95% of the population does not realize how hard people and animals fight to stay alive. I can't find a lot of sympathy for criminals but this beats hanging, etc.
ReplyDeletePeople die everyday from heroin and fentanyl overdose. Seems like a good use of the confiscated product. They feel euphoric, go to sleep, stop breathing, done.
ReplyDeleteBilderback
@SoCalRuss,
ReplyDeleteNo one said anything about the chemicals being carcinogenic.
And if they suffer, it's de facto "cruel", therefore legally void, and violates the US Constitution. If you don't care about that at all, you're no better than the people on the other side, and actually a good deal worse. Re-think please.
@Anon 4:09P,
It doesn't work like that. Either cruel or unusual voids the method. Period. Get new SCOTUS rulings, and you have grounds. Otherwise, neither/nor.
@Sentenza,
a) She was a five-star incompetent assclown. No one in the biz with two functional brain cells did anything but cheer her sentence. The med she was supposed to give (besides having a different NAME on the LABEL - which means she never read the freaking label before giving it!!) comes as a liquid. The one she pulled is a dry powder, and has to be MIXED to use. Nurses with IQs above plant life call this an indicator. (This is also why nursing licenses in some states aren't recognized in any other states. All education and licensure is not equal.)
b) And you always, Always, ALWAYS monitor effects. She should have been horsewhipped for the level of callous neglect and indifference she demonstrated, and then LWOP'ed.
c) And the attempted cover-up magicians at Duke should be in the same cell with her.
The level of criminality and gross incompetence in that case was staggering.
@Anon 5:06P,
SCOTUS cares. And you should, if you want to keep the death penalty. That's the entire point. You can't torture people to death.
@Bilderback,
So that whole post was TL;DR for you...?
One more time:
They feel euphoric, and eventually stop breathing - after gasping for their last agonal breaths, fully mobile, like a fish flopping around out of water, and with half a dozen media witnesses present to document every twitch at a legal execution - until finally overwhelmed by the opiate. That's why we don't do that.
If we tried it that way, the only thing you'd execute would be the death penalty itself.
So please, either advocate for that, or sadism, as an honest broker, if either of those are your intent.