"The Supreme Court’s Responsibility for Recent Death Penalty Mishaps," is by Cornell Law Professor Michael C. Dorf.
The execution rate in the United States has declined in the last two decades, but what the late Justice Harry Blackmun famously called “the machinery of death” remains deeply flawed. Two recent controversial executions illustrate how capital punishment continues to defy attempts at civilizing.
Some methods of execution that are now regarded as horrific were first introduced as efforts to decrease the suffering of the condemned during the process by which the state deliberately takes his life. The guillotine and the electric chair were each, in their day, considered humane. In more recent times, lethal injection has become the supposedly humane method of choice.
In principle, lethal injection could make death relatively painless. People euthanizing a suffering family pet or, in jurisdictions that permit physician-assisted suicide, hastening their own deaths, routinely choose a lethal dose of barbiturate to ease the passage.
But execution at the hands of the state by lethal injection typically involves a “cocktail” of three chemicals, rather than a large dose of sedative. As a consequence, it holds the potential for horrific mishaps. If the paralytic chemical takes effect but the anesthetic does not, the condemned may experience excruciating pain but appear outwardly placid, as the paralytic prevents him from showing what is happening. (The same problem has sometimes plagued anesthesia during surgery.)
Dorf also examines Texas' execution of Edgar Tamayo Arias:
The torturous execution of Dennis McGuire was not the only illegal administration of the death penalty in recent weeks. Last week, Texas executed Mexican national Edgar Tamayo over the objections of the government of Mexico and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Their pleas to Texas Governor Rick Perry and to the Supreme Court fell on deaf ears.
Coverage of the lethal injection issues is cataloged in the category index; also, available, coverage and commentary on the Tamayo execution.
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