Lethal
injection is the most common method used to put inmates to death. It
occurs by a deadly quantity of three different drugs being injected
into the body. A dose of hospital anesthetics are delivered into the
body to cause unconsciousness, which is followed by paralysis to
relax the lungs and diaphragm. Finally, potassium chloride is
injected, which causes fatal cardiac arrest. The entire process
should take around five minutes. The question that comes to mind is –
Is lethal injection a secure alternative method of the death penalty,
or should it be abolished?
Lethal
injection has been a controversial topic over the previous few
months, as more and more people are succumbing to its effects.
This past Thursday, lethal injection took another victim, Dennis
McGuire. Dennis McGuire was convicted for the rape and murder of a
22-year-old pregnant woman in 1989. Eyewitness claim that Mr. McGuire
was suffering and struggling in the last few minutes of his life. The
execution took unusually long, and an untested concoction of drugs
were used in the procedure. A week earlier, Michael Lee Wilson
murdered a co-worker and he was executed in Oklahoma. His last words
were, “I feel my whole body burning.” These words really make one
rethink how the lethal injection works.
In my mind,
lethal injection is the most humane way to go about ending a person's
life, because there should be little to no pain, and it should happen
almost instantly. Contrary to what I believed, the government is
working with different types of lethal injections, and some cause
more pain than others. The injection that Mr. McGuire was given
should have taken approximately five minutes to complete, but ended
up taking 15 minutes. That is triple the time that it should have
taken, and he was also struggling, gasping, snorting and making
choking noises for more than half the time.
The method that
was supposed to be, “Quick and painless method to end the life of
death row inmates” has not in fact been painless the whole time.
With people still suffering, a new method should be proposed, or
there should be a change in the way that lethal injections work. It
is probably very inefficient to use lethal injection on every death
row inmate due to the costs of lethal injection itself. The cost of
keep death row inmates alive is increasing. According to the
California Assessment of Costs by Judge Arthur Alarcon, the cost of
the death penalty in California has reached over $4 billion since
1978. That is $4 billion that could be used for other purposes, like
education or funding. While it may appear to be the most humane
method, the lethal injection method has not been properly optimized
for the least amount of pain, as people are still suffering during
the procedure.
Lethal Injections
– the controversial topic that will constantly be debated by many.
Problems are arising that need to be looked at, as the situation is
getting worse due to the suffering of inmates. There are other ways
to put down death row inmates, but lethal injection will be the best
method with more research and discoveries.
Firstly, I'd like to point out the irony in the title of this entry "Lethal Injection, Is it Safe?" Clearly it's not safe, it's lethal. I think that's the wrong question to be asking.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I find it interesting how relatively new the debate on whether or not capital punishment is humane is in comparison to the age of the practice of capital punishment itself. I found a short video on the history channel website that goes through a brief early history of punishment for crimes by death and though currently we search for the most humane methods of killing a person and debate whether or not capital punishment is even ethical, in the past execution used to be a public activity where citizens would watch or even participate.
http://www.history.com/shows/modern-marvels/videos/early-execution
When previous methods of execution are taken into account, what we do today doesn't seem nearly as bad.
-Brianna Lee Group 3 Context
P.S. ( Please excuse the video that instantly ques after the execution video. I couldn't find a way to keep it from playing.)
Capital punishment for the time is inevitable. I will put aside my opinion on whether or not it should be in effect in the first place, as this article assumes that the inmate will be in process of being put to death. Lethal injection is not safe, as it is not intended to be. But it is possibly the most humane way to go about putting said inmates to death. Until it is proven not to be and different techniques are developed, lethal injection should be the primary method used on death row. Like Matthew stated, it isn’t financially possible or responsible to use lethal injection for every inmate being put to death, so instead we should turn to the focus of developing more sound and affordable ways to put these prisoners to death, provided they are humane and aren’t violating any human rights. This may be hard to do, but in reality, it is the best option while the death penalty is still in use.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the whole controversy on humane ways to execute inmates on death row is very interesting but also a very important topic that needs to be talked about. I've always thought that lethal injection was the quickest and most painless way to execute somebody but after reading this post i have a change of mind. If lethal injection doesn't make the execution painless then what is the point in wasting money to do it? I thought that the whole point of lethal injection was to make it painless and quick. Money should be invested to research better, more humane ways of execution because making somebody suffer just isnt right, even if they are bad people.In the article "Making Execution Humane(Or Can it Be?)", it talks about just how hard it is to find executioners these days and how hard it is to even find people to restore old electrical chairs.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/13/us/making-execution-humane-or-can-it-be.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
As stated, lethal injection is obviously not a very safe option. But, it is the most efficient and humane option brought up by doctors and scientists to kill a prisoner as of today. It is very sad to hear that some prisoners had to go through excruciating pain when the injection did not go well, but it is not like they were “purposely” put in pain. I think that we should definitely start to invent new ways to go about this system though. Since lethal injections are not very affordable to begin with, we should think of a new, more effective and inexpensive way to kill inmates. Compared to earlier forms of punishment, such as the electric chair, I’m sure prisoners would definitely be more up for a lethal injection. The amount of prisoners in jail cells are rising by the minute and a new solution should be made fast.
ReplyDeletePutting aside whether capital punishment is ethical or not, it is still practiced in the United States. As such, any form of capital punishment that puts the individual through any type of pain is unconstitutional. Lethal injection, however, is the only viable method used that may not cause pain to the inmate. The issue with this case is that they decided to use an untested concoction as opposed to something that has been previously tested and used on other inmates. This was very irresponsible of the state to do, and could be what caused McGuire so much pain. As Matthew stated, a different, more efficient, and humane way of capital punishment should exist. If we're going to be the last first world country to continue using the death penalty, we must at least be humane and civil about it.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually pretty interesting but not surprising in the least. Lethal injection is basically a drug and drugs are known to not always have the same effect on every person. What may be a painless death for one person might not be the same for another. Now is it a humane way of killing someone? I'm not sure because I technically don't think its humane to kill anyone but that's not how the world works. As far as I'm concerned, the people who are being executed are dying. Most people I would imagine experience a painless death as they are supposed to. This is not always the case as the examples in the article point out. However, even though there are extreme cases like these, I don't think its worth the effort to improve the efficiency of killing someone painlessly. You said it yourself in the blog, the billions spent on death row inmates is already ridiculously high. So I guess in conclusion, if a few are not going to die painlessly, just forget about them. I mean they are dying after all. The worst part of a traumatic experience is that you remember it for the rest of your life. These death row prisoners don't have to remember it for very long.
ReplyDeleteIn this blog, I also agree that lethal injection is the most humane way to go about the death penalty. I believe that unless there is further research to make an alternative to the lethal injection, these injections will be the most productive and humane way to end a life. Although that people who have received the death penalty have complained about the last minutes of their lives feeling a “burning,” it could be much worse. With this, I do not think that anything needs to be done to switch this procedure in the death penalty. Lethal injections, although not harmless, provide a quick and easy way to end a life on the death penalty. As for now, these injections are the best we are going to get.
ReplyDeleteLethal injection has been a form of execution for many years and usually goes smoothly for the most part. Other ways are more tortuous including electric chair which has been banned in most states as well as hanging which is basically ban everywhere. They should monitor the amount a person needs to be injected with to make sure they are executed smoothly. Obviously these people being executed have done something extremely bad to get them to this spot but that doesn't mean they should be in pain for the last few minutes of their life. This is the most humane method of execution in my eyes and should be continued to be used but does need to be fixed a little for maximum effectiveness.
ReplyDeleteWhile capital punishment in general raises many ethical questions among people, the article here is focusing specifically on lethal injection, so that is what I will focus on. I have always assumed that lethal injection was mostly a pain-free method of execution; however after reading article, I realize that I may have been misled. In some cases it would seem that lethal injection may result in some level of suffering or pain for the inmate. Despite this, it is hard to ignore that it is still much more humane than the previous methods of capital punishment that we have experimented with. Examples of hanging, electrocution, firing squad, and the gas chamber are all methods which our country has used in the past. Lethal injection still seems to be more ethical and humane than these methods, and unless a better alternative is developed, I believe we should continue using lethal injection for capital punishment. Here is a similar article which argues that lethal injection really does cause excessive pain before an inmate's execution.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7269-execution-by-injection-far-from-painless.html#.Ut974bTn-po