[gatagato]

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether the three-drug protocol Oklahoma uses in executions violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to examine whether the three-drug protocol being used for capital punishment in Oklahoma violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual execution methods.

At issue in the case is whether the first drug injected into the condemned prisoner’s body, midazolam, is capable of rendering the inmate reliably unconscious before the following two drugs are administered.

Under the three-drug protocol used in Oklahoma, the first drug is used to make the prisoner unconscious. The second drug, vecuronium bromide, is used to paralyze the body. The third drug, potassium chloride, is deployed in the final stage to stop the heart.

If all three drugs work together, the inmate should appear to fall asleep and die.

But botched executions in several states suggest the ordeal may be anything but peaceful. Experts say that if the first drug fails to render the inmate into an extended, coma-like level of unconsciousness, the prisoner may awaken and experience excruciating pain as the other two drugs are administered.

In April 2014, for example, Oklahoma death row inmate Clayton Lockett awoke in the middle of the execution process and writhed in pain as officials scrambled to discover what had gone wrong. It took 40 minutes for Mr. Lockett to die.

Similar episodes involving midazolam were observed during executions in Ohio in January 2014 and in Arizona in July 2014. The Arizona execution took nearly two hours with the inmate gasping more than 640 times, according to a reporter who witnessed the execution.

Oklahoma officials later issued a report about the Lockett execution. They concluded that the first drug was not being effectively injected into Lockett’s bloodstream. They revised their protocols, increased the dosage of midazolam, and sought to resume executions.

That’s when the four inmates filed a lawsuit seeking a judicial examination Oklahoma’s capital punishment protocol. A federal judge and a federal appeals court upheld the state’s procedures.

The inmates then filed their petition asking the US Supreme Court to examine the Oklahoma protocol.

Their petition was pending last week, when the first of the four inmates, Charles Warner, was scheduled to be put to death. For reasons that remain unclear, the high court declined to intervene on Jan. 15 and Mr. Warner was, in fact, executed.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent of the high court’s refusal to issue a stay of execution. Three other members of the court, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan joined the dissent.

“Petitioners have committed horrific crimes, and should be punished,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in her eight-page dissent. “But the Eighth Amendment guarantees that no one should be subjected to an execution that causes searing, unnecessary pain before death.”

She added: “I hope that our failure to act today does not portend our unwillingness to consider these questions.”

There is no indication in the court’s brief order how many justices agreed to take up the Oklahoma case. The votes of four justices are required to grant a petition.

The case will likely be argued in April with a decision handed down by late June.

Dale Baich, one of the attorneys representing the Oklahoma inmates, said the inmates were pleased that the court had agreed to decide the execution process.

“The drug protocol used in Oklahoma is not capable of producing a humane execution, even if it is administered properly,” Mr. Baich said in a statement.

“The time is right for the Court to take a careful look at this important issue, particularly given the bungled executions that have occurred since states started using these novel and experimental drug protocols,” he said.

The case is Glossip v. Gross (14-7955).
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice...ecutions-video

See also:
2014 Is the Worst Year in the History of Lethal Injection

http://www.documentingreality.com/fo...99/index4.html




On January 9, 2014 Oklahoma executed Michael Lee Wilson using three drugs, including a paralyzing agent. “I feel my whole body burning,” Wilson said out loud, shortly after the executioners began pushing the drugs into his arm.


On January 16, Ohio executed Dennis McGuire using a new and untested two-drug combination of midazolam and hydromorphone—the same drug combination that Arizona would use to kill Wood. McGuire’s execution, at 25 minutes, was the longest in Ohio’s recent history—and witnesses said he gasped several times throughout.


On April 29, 2014 Oklahoma carried out what may have been the worst lethal injection in U.S. history: Executioners pushed an IV catheter straight through a vein in Clayton Lockett’s groin, so that the drugs filled his tissue and not his bloodstream. As Lockett writhed and grimaced, the executioners closed the curtains and tried to call off the execution—but it was too late, and he eventually died of a heart attack.


On July 23, 2014, a prisoner named Joseph Rudolph Wood III suffered what was one of the longest executions in U.S. history. Executioners in Arizona began pumping the lethal drugs into Wood’s veins at 1:57 p.m. His death was not pronounced until nearly two hours later at 3:49 p.m. According to Michael Kiefer, a reporter with the Arizona Republic who witnessed the execution, Wood gasped 660 times before he died. A witness from the attorney general’s office said he was merely snoring, but another attending reporter used what has become, in descriptions of botched executions, a familiar metaphor, saying Wood looked “like a fish on shore gulping for air."

Wood was convicted in 1989 of double murder. His execution was the fourth problematic execution so far in 2014, making it already the worst year in the 37-year history of lethal injection. While previous years have seen several executions where states struggled to establish IV access, all of this year's problematic executions have had issues after the drugs began to flow.

[rob666]

Why not just give a lethal dose of barbiturates ?

This is how they euthanize people dying of a terminal illness, and apparently it's the first drug administered during Capitol punishment.

[niknik]

If they suffer a little fuck'em. I'd be fine with a 50cal right in the forehead.

[gatagato]

In the Netherlands, for assisted suicides, they use Sodium thiopental indeed, but after doing that they need somehow to induce respiratory arrest, which can be achieved by the somministration of any of alcuronium bromide, or pancuronium bromide, they're muscle relaxants. But there are at least two know issues with them: in some cases, since they don't have hypnotic effects, if the Sodium thiopental turns out to be ineffective, you won't get a painless death. AND being muscle relaxants, they'd "mask" the condemned prisoner's suffering during the execution. Basically, nobody really can say whether this form of execution is less painful or less cruel than other forms of execution, not sure that gasping 660 times is better than being guillotined. Apparently, some are more focused on the appearance than the reality, but this is just my guess.

[Lythal]

Shame they cant use the "Green dream" that is used to euthanase animals so its all done in one shot, apparently the company that has it patented refuses to let it be used for stuff like death row executions.
Out of all the choices in the US, i would go for firing squad. lethal injection just doesnt sound nice at all given they have to use three different things. Hanging can apparently go wrong if the drop is too short or too long, and if the rope is around the neck in the wrong spot. Electric chair often needs to be used more than once. and gas chamber just sounds terrible, choking to death like that

[GregK]

Id rather be shot in the back of my head.. with a big caliber.
How much suffering did these guys inflict, although that doesn't make It right I suppose.

[Nadia]

On April 25, 2013 Richard Cobb was executed in Texas, after the first injection he exclaimed "Wow. This is great. Thank you, warden.”

Which was a great disappointment to his surviving victims and their family. It seemed as tho he enjoyed the process, which he openly admitting he was scared and sad about prior.
I don't completely agree with the death penalty, I think some states hand it out to often. BUT I also think it's too easy, Especially if there is no suffering involved. Yes we're taking away their life, which would otherwise be carried out in prison, but getting them high and wasting them is just ass backwards. Bring back the gallows, or the chair!