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Execution By Lethal Injection Under Renewed Scrutiny
Most US states that permit lethal-injection executions prevent veterinarians from using the same method to put animals down, according to a new study.One of the three drugs injected into condemned prisoners, the one that causes paralysis, has been banned from use in animals by at least 42 states, said the study's author, Ty Alper, a death penalty opponent and associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.
The states include the five leaders in lethal injections - Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Missouri and North Carolina - and account for 907 of the 929 executions by that method since 1982.
Lethal injection has been on hold while the Supreme Court considers a challenge to it in a case from Kentucky, which is among the roughly three dozen states that administer three drugs in succession to knock out, paralyse and kill prisoners. The major criticism of this is that if the executioner administers too little anaesthetic, the inmate could suffer excruciating pain from the other two drugs. This may go undetected because the paralysing drug would prevent any change in the dying prisoner's expression.
In Kentucky, two death-row inmates argue that a large dose of a barbiturate, the most common way of putting down animals, is a less painful way to carry out executions. The state prohibits using a paralytic in animal killings.
Federal judges in Missouri, California and Tennessee have ruled that the way lethal injections are carried out in those states is unconstitutional, mainly because of the risk of severe pain.
Yet states have refused to approve injection of a single drug, in part from fear that this might precipitate a new round of lawsuits to stop executions.
© 2008 The Independent
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Show AllDoes death penalty work?
In 2002 Americans were very happy because they had only 16.638 criminal homicides: and they were right because from 1984 to 1993 criminal homicides were 22.000 per year. Au contraire, in the same 2002, in Italy we were very afraid because, with a population that is grosso modo one fifth of the American one, we had 638 criminal homicides, and we were very concerned about it, even if those 638 were less than one third the homicides we had in 1991. Americans love to think the drop is a benefit of the death penalty. We cannot agree because we are a death penalty free country. (In Europe this punishment is strictly forbidden and the majority of the world is abolitionist).
Actually Italy ended capital punishment in 1877 and had it again only under fascism. In those sad years the homicide rate was five times bigger that we have now, and, in the twenty years following the definitive end of the death penalty (1948-1968), the homicide rate dropped from 5 to 1,4. Something like this happened in Canada in the years that followed the end of capital punishment in 1976. Curiously, in the same year, the Supreme Court gave green light to the "new and improved" American death penalty and, with the shooting of Gary Gilmore (17th January 1977): the hangman was back in business and the experiment begun. Now, after more than 1.000 human sacrifices, we can say with Justice Blackmun: "the death penalty experiment has failed".
Death penalty is an enormous waste of lives, money, time and resources. This cancer is destroying the American justice. It is not a deterrent and kills the poor, the weak, the mad, the illiterate, and the black. In the thousand killed some were innocent, many mad and much many not guilty of a capital crime, but quite all will be alive, and some free, if they have had a competent counsel. Hangman states are not in a better situation of states without death penalty. Sooner or later Americans will realise that death penalty is an immoral, indecent, illegal, expensive, stupid, cruel, dangerous, racist, classist, not working violation of human rights.
Best regards.
Dott. Claudio Giusti
Via Don Minzoni 40, 47100 Forlì, Italia
Claudio Giusti had the privilege and the honour to participate in the first congress of the Italian section of Amnesty International. He was one of the founders of the World Coalition Against The Death Penalty. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of Osservatorio sulla Legalità e i Diritti.
"In Kentucky, two death-row inmates argue that a large dose of a barbiturate, the most common way of putting down animals, is a less painful way to carry out executions. The state prohibits using a paralytic in animal killings."
Fine by me. More barbiturates then. Problem solved.
What happened to the huge guy with the axe? Don't we use him anymore? Why?
Please explain what a 'humane' way of killing someone is.
Marrying a nag or a control freak ~Loxax~.
claudio giusti, you are correct, but Americans are not interested in being rational on this topic. I don't quite understand why. Even people on the CommonDreams discussion forums express a blood lust for revenge. I think in our country it is a lack of spirituality, a lack of sense of spiritual connection. This has nothing to do with being religious or not religious, it has to do with not recognizing that we are foremost spiritual beings.
I believe so far in this country we are the most materialistic people in the world. We have no respect for elders, we apparently don't care what happens to our children unless they are of our own blood, and we tend to seek simple answers to complex problems.
kathyodat