Lethal Injection is Anything but Humane

A large debate is entering the public eye, is that the use of lethal injection to execute death row prisoners is comparable to torture.

Initially lethal injection was implemented as it was thought to be a more humane method of execution than the electric chair. However, there is growing concern that lethal injection may be far from humane.

New research carried out by the University of Miami has discovered that it is possible that prisoners being executed by lethal injection could be suffocating to death when they are still conscious. It is also thought that they could be in quite a large amount of pain. The conclusion of the study said that the drug used for lethal injection was not acting in the way it was supposed to. The results of the study have just been released in the journal of the Public Library of Science.

This had brought up important ethical issues, such as is this method of executions violating the Constitution, which bans "cruel and unusual punishment."

Currently of the states that have the death penalty, 37 use the lethal injection method as the first option for execution. In recent times the ethics of this form of execution has been question by at least 12 other states resulting in their stopping or suspending the use of lethal injection for execution.

The lethal injection contains a number of drugs. These are potassium chloride, which makes the heart stop, pancuronium which paralyses the muscles and the lungs and it also includes an anaesthetic, thiopental.

The idea of the lethal injection is that the prisoner would become unconscious and then die from induced "respiratory and cardiac arrest." However, the study found that often times the drug cocktail does not work as it should.

In the study 42 executions that took place in California and North Caroline were investigated. One of the main parts of the study included looking at the doses of each drug given to the death row prisoner. It was found that often times not enough thiopental was given leaving the prisoner conscious.

The study also found that the drug given to stop the heart, potassium chloride did not always speed up the death process and also that the drug causes a severe sensation of burning.

The only drug that did consistently do as it was intended was pancuronium, which is responsible for paralysing the lungs. However, if this drug is working as it should but the other drugs are not, the prisoner could suffocate to death due to t heir lungs being paralysed but in extreme pain from the potassium chloride and also be conscious.

The researchers found that when the execution went wrong the injection was not entering the body through a vein but instead entering through a muscle. When this happened "prisoners would be fully aware as the paralysis took hold and the potassium chloride was administered." The head of the study, Teresa Zimmers said that, "It would sort of be the equivalent of slowly suffocating while being burning alive."

In the conclusion of the report the researchers said the "The conventional view of lethal injection leading to an invariably peaceful and painless death is questionable."

According to the Washington Post many of those that are in support of the death penalty say that the findings mean nothing and they are just assumptions.

One of the most high profile possible examples of the lethal injection gone wrong occurred last December in Florida. Death row prisoner, Angel Diaz, did not die quicklym in fact he took 34 minutes to die after the needles used to give him the lethal cocktail were not inserted correctly.

Sources
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/24/lethal_injections_may_cause_suffocation/
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/24/BAGA7PE1RH1.DTL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/23/AR2007042301671.html?hpid=sec-nations