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The New York Times has an excellent article on the problems with lethal injection from the NYT Magazine (also kudos on the Neil Young lyric for the title).

I am morally opposed to the death penalty. I believe there is only one to judge the living and the dead and I believe that anyone that gets the death penalty will have theirs in the afterlife.

That’s not to say I don’t have purely secular reasons for opposing it. I wish I had the leftofthemiddle archives for easy access to a lot of the stories I wrote about. I grew up in Illinois, which freed more death row prisoners than they executed and whose own Governor pointed out that the state likely executed an innocent man. The state of Kentucky has banned the three drug cocktail from euthanizations on animals because it is inhumane, but still executes people that way.

I currently live in Missouri which has been the focus of the method of execution thanks to a Federal court ruling in a death penalty case that executions must be carried out by a licensed physician. The AMA has stated that participation in an execution violates medical ethics and most doctors have chosen to stay away. But why did the judge in Missouri come to this conclusion? Was it a pang of liberal guilt? No, it was the testimony of the main executioner in Missouri.

About a third of the way through two hours of questioning, in response to Taylor’s attorney, Ginger Anders, asking why Doerhoff gave inconsistent answers to questions concerning the amounts of drugs used, he said: “I can save you a whole lot of time and offer my apologies to the court, but last night I was trying to pay my cable bill. . . . I realized I had copied my account number by dropping one digit and transposing two. In surgery that’s not important. But I am dyslexic . . . . so it’s not unusual for me to make mistakes.”

Over the course of Doerhoff’s testimony, Anders uncovered many significant details similar to those uncovered in other states. For instance, Doerhoff testified that executions in Missouri have taken place in the dark, an execution team working by flashlight, and that the execution team routinely consists of “nonmedical people.” For most, the day of the execution is “the first time probably in their life they have picked up a syringe . . . so it’s a little stressful for them to be doing this.” Doerhoff stated that he determined if an inmate being executed had been adequately anesthetized by observing the condemned’s face through a window, which others noted was obscured by partly opened blinds. He also told the court that he reduced by half the five grams of anesthetic he had been using after the pharmaceutical company supplying it started packaging it in smaller bottles, which made it tricky to get the five grams in a single syringe. When Anders asked if he used calculations to determine the quantities of drugs to administer, he replied, “Heavens, no.”

Later Anders asked, “Is any part of the execution procedure written down?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“There’s no guide that you follow as you’re doing it?”

“Absolutely not.”

Think about the answers he gave and how he gave them.  He volunteered the fact that he’s dyslexic and has trouble with amounts. He lowered the anesthetic because it was too difficult to get the amount he was using in the syringe. That amount wasn’t even scientifically derived, it’s from observing if there is pain in the inmate’s face through a partially obstructed window and into a dark room. Most people on the execution staff have never handled a syringe before sticking it into an inmate’s arm.

Some people would say that it’s just too bad that an inmate has to suffer before he dies. Unfortunately, the framers of the Constitution knew this to be the case and included the 8th Amendment into the Bill of Rights specifically to ban the practice of inhumane treatment of prisoners by their own government.

The problems with the three drug cocktail are well documented. The first drug is a short acting barbiturate that renders the inmate unconscious. The second drug paralyzes the person so they won’t do things like scream in pain or shake and scare the witnesses. The third drug stops the heart and the lungs but causes horrific pain in a person that has not been properly anesthetized; a sensation like fire in the veins.

We’ve finally gotten past the point that challenging the lethal injection procedure is seen as a delaying tactic. Judges have started to realize that euthanizing people in a way that encourages mistakes clearly violates the 8th Amendment. Even the President’s own brother stopped executions in Florida after one went horribly wrong and the inmate was left with chemical burns on his arms after the executioner put the IV in wrong and it caused the execution to last half an hour.

The time has come to join the rest of the world and ban executions all together. Go, please read the article and let me know what you think.