Botched Executions & Their Affect on Public Opinion
I
f you follow capital punishment in the United States, you are likely aware that already in 2014 we have seen three horribly botched executions in this country (all by lethal injection) – worst of all, the most recent debacle in Arizona. Witnesses report that condemned prisoner Joseph Rudolph Wood III gasped and struggled to breathe for nearly two hours before his death – a horrific scene by most civilized standards, very easy to label “cruel and unusual” as prohibited by the 8th amendment.
Ironically, lethal injection as a method of execution was designed specifically to address and allay 8th amendment concerns. It is not supposed to involve any demonstration of prolonged discomfort — forget agony! It was intended explicitly to be humane, to cause minimal suffering for the condemned, and above all, to be free from gruesome drama.
Unfortunately for those who favor the death penalty, the series of botches received much more media attention than the other 22 executions that were performed without incident so far this year. A botch job hat trick for the year fans the fire, and the net effect is a huge impact on public approval of the death penalty.¹
Though the media seemed to focus on the various cocktails of drugs used to carry out executions as the center of controversy, the actual cause of the last two botches had little to do with those drugs, The point of failure: the condemned prisoners in both Oklahoma and Arizona, each suffered a ruptured vein as the drugs were being administered.
All IV drugs depend on veins in order to function properly. The veins of a condemned prisoner are therefore an integral component of the execution procedure, they are the delivery mechanism, without which any IV drug loses its intended effect.
My takeaway: the lethal injection process is flawed by design, the vascular integrity of the condemned prisoner is the critical weak link, veins must remain intact long enough to deliver the fatal payload, but there is no way to guarantee this! When a vein fails during an execution, the lethal injection method becomes a worst-case act of barbarism.
Many prisons’ protocols have provisions for backup measures in case of failure, but literally all² of them depend on the same weakest link. Extra doses of the drugs are worthless as a backup measure when a vein ruptures — it’s not a failure of the drugs, it’s the delivery mechanism! As the death row population gets older and older their vascular systems degrade with age along with the rest of their bodies, thus this problem will occur with increasing frequency.
Until and unless they have a drug that will induce death when injected subcutaneously or intramuscularly, lethal injection is unworkable as a universal form of execution. Realistically, the only way it might be salvaged is if the backup plans used diverse delivery methods. For example, having pentothal gas or even nitrous oxide on hand would surely be a godsend when things go awry. Hypoxia causes death inside of 5 minutes, no sensation of strangling when the condemned has something inert, rather than caustic, to inhale. Consciousness just slips away.
But in practice, given the arrogance of penal authorities and government in general, in all likelihood nothing will change, and botches will continue to occur with progressive severity and frequency, furthering the erosion of public support for capital punishment, until it is abolished.
An aside, the political circus in Oklahoma, in April 2014, is worthy of mention. The Oklahoma state supreme court voted 5-4 to issue a stay of execution for Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner, so that the court could “fully adjudicate the serious constitutional issues about the extreme secrecy surrounding lethal injection procedures…”
Sounded like a worthy endeavor, but the stays drew immediate fire from the other branches of government. Governor Mary Fallin issued a statement attacking the court’s decision, and a representative in the Oklahoma state legislature filed articles to impeach the five justices who voted for the stay. Within 48 hours the stay was lifted without comment from the court. (Not that such important rulings the court makes can be influenced by political bullying, heavens no, perish the thought!)
Ironically the first of execution of that double-header was botched — to the point the warden called it off and efforts were made [but failed] to save the condemned man. Not surprisingly the second one was stayed for at least 6 months due to failure of the first.
¹National Public Opinion Polls and Studies