Is this, as the Stateline article headlines, evidence that America is inching towards a moratorium on lethal injection? Why, or why not?Sort of yes and no. As the first article indicates, there is the American position on the death penalty, and then there is the Texan position. They are not at all the same. The American position, in my experience, in inching towards a sort of foot-dragging, shame-faced end to the death penalty. The Texan position, if anything, is hardening.
If lethal injection is found to be cruel & unusual, what does it mean for other currently-approved execution methods?I suspect that it means that whatever method of execution is used must be completely free of pain and suffering for the condemned. It's hard to imagine what this could be other than the use of some sort of drug to induce total loss of consciousness, followed by death. This is what the current method of lethal injection attempts to do, of course. But does it work?
LinkQUOTE
A new US study suggests that some prisoners executed by lethal injection die from asphyxiation while conscious, paralyzed and in pain.
. . .
. . . the researchers suggest that the doses are not tailored to the individual prisoner, for instance to adjust for body weight.
Reports on a number of recent executions reveal that some prisoners take many minutes to die, and others become very distressed, because the method is not working as intended.
. . .their findings suggest that in some cases the dose of the anasthetic, thiopental, is not sufficient to cause death and may even not be enough to keep the prisoner unconscious for the duration of the execution.
They also suggest that the dose of potassium chloride is sometimes not enough to stop the heart, which results in prisoners being conscious while the paralysis brought about by the pancuronium bromide asphyxiates them.
The attitude of some advocates for the death penalty would say "Good! They
should suffer." This is a philosophical question, and all I can say is that I take it as axiomatic that suffering is an evil, even if it is "deserved." From my point of view, any deliberate act which causes suffering which is not absolutely necessary is, by definition, cruel.
And only in Texas, it seems, is it not "unusual."
If the government does a poor job of killing painlessly through the use of drugs, I wonder how it would be possible for them to do so with any other method of death.
What do you foresee will be the legal and public opinion on the death penalty 20 or 50 years from now? Still on the statue books with widespread approval, a good idea in principle that is not practiced because of the constraints of the 8th? An antiquated barbarism not suitable in a civilised society? Or something else?Twenty years from now? Still supported by a strong majority in Texas, still controversial in the rest of the United States, with a very slow movement of opinion away from it. (The closest metaphor I can make to the slow change in attitude is the slow change in favor of same-sex marriage. It seems that social issue take a long time to change, but when they change they stay changed for a very long time.) Twenty years from now, I suspect that the death penalty will still be theoretically possible, but extremely rare, in non-Texan America.
Fifty years from now? I would hope that it had disppeared from the planet, with the unavoidable exception of extremely repressive regimes. Maybe it will still be used in the Lone Star State. Maybe not. One can only hope.