The Baltimore Sun has an update on the status of lethal injection challenges across the country. LINK
Executions in several states have been put on hold - or procedures have been ordered changed - in response to inmate claims that the three-drug injection process used in nearly every U.S. execution is an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment. The federal government and 37 of the 38 states that allow capital punishment use lethal injection. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, states have conducted 1,029 executions - 861 of those by injection.
The Sun also has a companion article, Lethal injection lacks protocols." LINK
As an Oklahoma legislator in the 1970s, Bill J. Wiseman followed the will of his district and voted to restore the state's death penalty. But with deep personal reservations about capital punishment, he also sought out a more humane alternative to electrocution and became the unwitting architect of the injection protocol now used in nearly every U.S. execution.
Now, as then, Wiseman's concerns about the process run deep.
He never anticipated that lethal injection could be botched by problems of inadequate sedation or the use of a chemical to paralyze an inmate's muscles, as a widely publicized medical study reported last year.
And he never anticipated that state after state would adopt the same method and use it for more than two decades without re-examination and, in many instances, without exacting guidelines.
Thanks to Karl Keys for spotting this.
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