The debate over the humaneness of the methods employed in the death penalty encompasses several other closely-tied issues. The big question remains: is the death penalty, itself, humane? If it is, then who is to decide which method is the most humane? As I mentioned in my previous blog post, lethal injection is the more humane than other methods of execution used in the United States today. Though we have come a long way from the brutal and publically humiliating methods of past centuries, methods such as electrocution, hangings, and gas chambers continue to be in practice today. Why? Because there will always be proponents of the death penalty who claim that “an eye for an eye” is the way to provide justice, that if a person, a criminal, has caused pain to an innocent victim, he or she deserves to be punished in the most harsh method available. This leads me to ask the question of whether killing someone because they killed someone else, provides the victims, or their families, with any consolation. I agree with Ghanhi's statement that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind." I ended my last blog drawing the conclusion that death is never humane and that, no matter how we look at this issue of the methods by which a person is killed, capital punishment will always involve causing someone pain and suffering.
Proponents of the death penalty claim that all methods of execution are humane because in their view the death penalty is aimed at providing justice to the victim. In an attempt to provide justice to the victim, they easily overlook the rights of the accused. John McAdams sums up this view in declaring, “If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims.” He goes on to say that he “would much rather risk the former.” I agree with the fact that the criminal should be punished and the severity of the punishment, or the severity of the method of execution, should fit the crime that has been committed. However, I don’t think we should overlook the fact that the defendant, too, is guaranteed the same basic rights as the victim under the United States Constitution.
Opponents of the death penalty, view all methods as inhumane. They believe in the fact that killing is never an acceptable solution or a means of providing justice. Their principle argument against the death penalty is its violation of the fundamental human right to life. They claim that the death penalty contradicts the constitutional protection against “cruel and unusual punishment” promised to all US citizens under the eighth amendment. Studies have led to the conclusion that the death penalty, as a whole is not a crime deterrent. Opponents of the death penalty often reference the Bible in claiming that taking a human life is punishable in the eyes of God. The fact that hundreds of death row inmates have been proven innocent after having been sentenced to death also gives substantial support to this viewpoint. They view even the use of lethal injection, the method I propose is the most humane, to deprive people of their constitutional rights. Groups such as Amnesty International are taking measures in order to reduce the number of leatal injections administered in the United States each year. The efforts of this group and many others alike have been successful in that ten states in the United States have banned lethal injection as a means of execution. The Supreme Court is now reevaluating the use of lethal injection as "cruel and unusual." The fact that many previous executions have been flawed futher strengthens the argument of this position. Many of the executioners were not qualified to administer such executions and, as a result, caused the execution to go wrong-- causing tremendous pain to the inmate in the process. They also make reference to wrongful convictions in the past that have placed innocent people on death row and even led to the execution of several others.
In dealing with whether or not a method is humane, we must also consider whether or not it applies equally to everyone. Embedded in this argument is the idea that the death penalty is a means of providing justice; meaning that it should apply equally to everyone. However, this is not always the case. Sadly enough, but very apparent in today’s society, the conviction of a victim to the death penalty is largely influenced by his or her socioeconomic status and race. Today, more Whites support the use of the death penalty than Blacks. How can we deal with whether a method of execution is humane when the method of conviction is itself flawed?
My argument, however, centers not around whether or not the death penalty, itself, is humane but around which method of execution is most humane. Though I personally am against the death penalty, I accept the fact that it is a part of our justice system. Having accepted it as a means of providing justice to the victims I agree with law professor David Row at the University of Houston in that we should do our best in order to make the punishment of the criminals as humane as possible. A wider use of lethal injection as opposed to other methods of execution in the future will solve this dilemma. Lethal injection uses the same anesthetic drugs that are used in surgeries today. This proves the fact that the victim is receiving the same treatment as a person in a hospital. However, as the Supreme court continues to review cases that deal with the humaneness of the death peanlty, the methods that are used to administer it are still questioned. There is, as of right now, a temporary decrease in the number of executions as courts review the humameness of the practice of lethal injection. Whether this decrease is temporary remains questionable.
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6 comments:
Hi... nice insights here and lots of explanation and definitions. However, did you intend this to be an implications post? I may be wrong but it seems like there was not much analysis into the causality of death penalty.
To me, I think that the death penalty really stemmed from many historical traditions. In the past, there was no real "painless" way to die. Hence there were many cruel ways used to adhere the death penalty. Hence, today, there should be a change in the way we put down judged criminals. It just seems like we have new technology, use it.
But another interesting pattern of death sentencing was the humiliation imposed on the sentenced individual through his/her method of death. In the past, death punishments were made gruesome, slow and public partly for humiliation and deterrence. In today's society, sometimes deterrence is still needed. Could this be a reason why such horrible death punishments still exists in our society today?
I agree that if the death penalty must be administered it should be as humane as possible. The quote by John McAdams that you use poses a very interesting idea that essentially summarizes the rationality behind many individuals support for the death penalty. However, I agree with you that just because the death penalty will help deter crime does not mean that it has to be so cruel. You mention lethal injection as a possible solution that may help solve this problem. Are there any other solutions? Also what role has lethal injection played in previous cases? Yeo poses an interesting idea that in the past the death penalty was made public as a source of deterrence. Do you think that this should still be the case? If a punishment is painless will it still have the same effect on the public as a punishment that is painful? I feel that such issues will make a clear difference
in public opinion of the issue.
you agree with Ghandi that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind."
With regard to the death penalty, you likely both got it wrong in your interpretation of the "eye for an eye" text.
The full intent of the passage was to make sure that the punishment fit the crime, as opposed to the much more severe punishments of the past.
It was an effort to make sanction proportionate to crime.
Your comment about death penalty deterrence is false.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, have all found for death penalty deterrence. Not suprising, as all prospects of a negative outcome deter some.
There are no exceptions.
Lethal Injection: Current Controversies Resolved
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info, below
updated 9/05/07 (written 5/2005)
Several issues have come up with regard to lethal injection.
Generally, they are: 1) The murderer experiencing pain during execution; 2) The ethics of medical professionals participating in executions; and 3) Proper training of execution personnel.
1) PAIN AND LETHAL INJECTION
The evidence, including the immediate autopsy of executed serial murderer/rapist Michael Ross, supports that there is no pain within the lethal injection process.
There is a concern that some inmates may be conscious, but paralyzed, during execution, because the first of the three drugs used may have worn off, prior to death.
First, there is no evidence this has occurred. There is speculation.
Secondly, if properly administered, it cannot occur with the properties and amounts of the chemicals used and within the time frame of an execution.
An Associated Press reporter correctly stated that "there is little to support those claims except a few anecdotes of inmates gasping and convulsing and an article in the British medical journal Lancet." (AP, "Death penalty foes attack lethal-injection drug", 7/5/05)
The British Medical Journal, The Lancet, published an article critical of lethal injection (Volume 365, 4/16/05). A follow up article, by essential the same group of researchers, published a similar report in PLoS Medicine on 4/24/07.
The articles did not/could not identify one case where evidence existed than an inmate was conscious during execution.
The Lancet article identified 21 cases of execution where the level of "post mortem" (after death) sodium thiopental was below that used in surgery and, therefore, may suggest consciousness was possible.
A more accurate description would be all but impossible.
A "long after execution" post mortem measurement of sodium thiopental is very different from a moment of death measurement.
Dr. Lydia Conlay, chair of the department of anesthesiology, Baylor College of Medicine (Texas Medical Center, Houston) said the extrapolation of postmortem sodium thiopental levels in the blood to those at the time of execution is by no means a proven method. "I just don't think we can draw any conclusions from (the Lancet study) , one way or the other."
Actually, we can. The science is well known. Sodium thiopental is absorbed rapidly into the body. Long after execution blood testing of those levels means absolutely nothing with regard to the levels at the time of execution. Nothing.
The Lancet article did not dispute the obvious -- for executions, the sodium thiopental is administered in dosages roughly 10-20 times the amount necessary for sedation unconsciousness during surgical procedures.
Unconsciousness occurs within the first 30 seconds of the injection/execution process. The injection of the three drugs takes from 4-5 minutes. Death usually occurs within 6-7 minutes and is pronounced within 8-10 minutes.
The researchers also failed to note the much lower probability (impossibility?) that the murderer could be conscious, while all three drugs are coursing through the veins, concurrently.
Despite the Lancet article's presumptions and omissions, there is no scientific evidence that consciousness could occur with the amounts and methods of injecting those three chemicals within the execution period, when properly performed.
The AP article also stated that "They (death penalty opponents) also attack lethal injection by saying that the steps to complete it haven't been reviewed by medical professionals."
Ridiculous.
Medical professionals have both reviewed and implemented injection procedures for decades. The same procedures are used in executions. Criminal justice professionals have been trained in this application.
Does anyone not know this?
The chemicals used in lethal injection, as well as their individual and collective results, at the dosages used, are also well known by medical and pharmacology professionals.
Dr. A. Jay Chapman, the former Oklahoma Medical Examiner, who created the protocol, consulted a toxicologist and two anesthesiologists. He states the obvious " ' . . .it didn't actually require much research because the three chemicals - a painkiller, a muscle-paralyzing agent and a heart-stopper - are well-known to physicians.' 'It is anesthetizing someone for a surgical procedure, but simply carried to an extreme.' 'If it is competently administered, there will be no question about this business of pain and suffering.' "("Lethal Injection Father Defends Creation", Paul Ellias, Associated Press, 5/10/07)
Further, lethal injection is not a medical procedure, but the culmination of a judicial sentence carried out by criminal justice professionals, the result of which is intended as death, the outcome of every case.
The follow up research/article is "Lethal Injection for Execution: Chemical Asphyxiation?"(Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine, 4/24/07). Dr. Koniaris was an author in both this and the Lancet article.
The question mark from the title says it all.
From the Conclusion:
" . . . our findings suggest that current lethal injection protocols "may" not reliably effect death through the mechanisms intended, indicating a failure of design and implementation. "If" thiopental and potassium chloride fail to cause anesthesia and cardiac arrest, potentially aware inmates "could" die through pancuronium-induced asphyxiation." (Additional quotes are mine, for emphasis)
In other words, the authors tell us they cannot prove this has ever happened. They are speculating.
Skip the speculation: Some Reality
From Hartford Courant, "Ross Autopsy Stirs Execution Debate----Results Cited To Counter Talk Of Pre-Death Pain", August 11, 2005
The below is a paraphrase of parts of that article, including some exact quotes.
Results of the autopsy done on serial killer Michael Ross are being cited by several prominent doctors to refute a highly publicized article that appeared in The Lancet, the British medical journal, in April, 2005.
Critics of the Lancet article say it does not account for postmortem redistribution of the anesthetic - thiopental. The redistribution, the critics say, accounts for the lower levels of thiopental on which Dr. Koniaris based his Lancet article conclusions that the levels of anesthetic were inadequate. The Ross autopsy results document this redistribution, bolstering the critics' assertions.
Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut's chief medical examiner, was aware of the controversial Lancet article before performing the Ross autopsy. As a result, he took the additional step of drawing a sample of Ross's blood 20 minutes after he was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. May 13. Carver took a subsequent sample during the autopsy, which began about 7 hours later, at 9:40 a.m.
The 1st sample showed a concentration of 29.6 milligrams per liter of thiopental; the second sample showed a concentration of 9.4 milligrams per liter. The 1st sample was drawn from Ross' right femoral artery, and the second from his heart, which can account for some of the discrepancy. But Dr. Mark Heath, a New York anesthesiologist and one of the numerous doctors who have signed letters to The Lancet challenging the Koniaris article, said it clearly substantiates the postmortem redistribution of the thiopental.
Dr. Jonathan Groner, a pediatric surgeon from Ohio said he interviewed a number of forensic toxicologists before adopting the view that thiopental in a corpse leaves the blood and is absorbed by the fat, causing blood samples taken hours after death to be an unreliable marker of the levels of thiopental in the body at the time of death.
Groner described the Ross autopsy results as "a powerful refutation" of the Lancet-Koniaris study.
Dr. Ashraf Mozayani, a forensic toxicologist with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office in Texas, said the level of thiopental "drops quite a bit" after death. Even in the living, Mozayani said, thiopental levels decline rapidly after administration of the drug. She cited one study in which a patient was administered 400 milligrams of thiopental intravenously. After two minutes the concentration in the blood was measured at 28 milligrams, but dropped to 3 milligrams concentration 19 minutes after the anesthetic was injected.
Mozayani said the declining concentration of thiopental cited in the Ross autopsy report "make sense."
On The Lancet article, she said, "I don't think they have the whole story - the postmortem redistribution and all the other things they have to consider for postmortem testing."
NOTE: I think they had and knew the whole story. They just didn't include it in their report(s).
The Veterinary sidetrack
Opponents of the death penalty, as well as other uninformed or deceptive sources, have been stating that even vets do not use the paralytic agent in the euthanasia of animals. This is a perversion of the veterinary position, which actually provides support, however unintended, for the human execution process. Some fact checking is in order -- www(dot)avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf
2. THE MEDICAL/ETHICAL DILEMMA
Medical groups cite that there is an ethical conflict for participation in the lethal injection process, because medical professionals have a requirement to "do no harm".
Those ethical codes pertain, solely, to medical professionals and their treatment of patients. Judicial execution is not part of the medical profession and death row inmates are not patients.
For example, doctors and nurses can be police and soldiers and can kill, when deemed appropriate, within those lines of duty and without violating the ethical codes of their medical profession. Similarly, medical professionals do not violate their codes of ethics, when acting as technical experts, for executions, in a criminal justice procedure.
Physicians often participate in patient studies where there is hope that experimental drugs may, someday, prove beneficial. Physicians and other researchers know that many patients, taking placebos or less effective drugs, will suffer more additional harm or death because they are not taking the subject drug or that the subject drug will actually harm or kill more patients than the placebo of other drugs used in the study.
Physicians knowingly harm individual patients, in direct contradiction to their "do no harm" oath.
For the greater good, those physicians sacrifice innocent, willing and brave patients. Of course, there have been medical experiments without consent and, even, today, they continue ("Critical Care Without Consent", Washington Post, May 27, 2007; Page A01).
Physicians knowingly make exceptions to their "do no harm" requirement, every day, within their profession, where that code actually does apply. And, they should. There are obvious moral and ethical nuances and we should consider and pay attention to them, as is done within the medical profession.
The "do no harm" has no ethical effect in a non medical context, because this ethical requirement is for medical treatments, only, and for patients, only.
The acknowledged anti death penalty editors of The Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine agree. They write:
"Execution by lethal injection, even if it uses tools of intensive care such as intravenous tubing and beeping heart monitors, has the same relationship to medicine that an executioner's axe has to surgery." ("Lethal Injection Is Not Humane", PLoS, 4/24/07)
Doctors William L. Lanier and Keith H. Berge, both of Mayo Clinic, agree with Dr. Mark Heath, Columbia University anesthesiologist, who testified before the Florida lethal injections commission: “An execution has absolutely nothing even remotely connected to medicine…". (1).
All these medical editors and physicians are making the same point many of us have been making for some time: There is no ethical connection between medicine and lethal injection. Therefore, there should no ethical prohibition for medical professionals to participate in executions.
To put it clearly: The execution of death row inmates is not equivalent or connected to the treatment of patients.
Is this a mystery?
Any neutral observer would conclude that execution is not a medical treatment, but a criminal justice sanction. The basis for medical treatment is to improve the plight of the patient, for which the medical profession provides obvious and daily exceptions. The basis for execution is to carry out a criminal justice sentence where death is the sanction.
Justice, deterrence, retribution, just punishments, upholding the social contract, saving innocent life, etc., are all recognized as aspects of the death penalty, all dealing with the greater good.
Are murderers on death row willing participants? Of course. They willingly committed the crime and, therefore, willingly exposed themselves to the social contract of that jurisdiction.
Lethal injection is not a medical procedure. It is a criminal justice sanction authorized by law. Therefore, there is no ethical conflict with medical codes of conduct and medical personal participating in executions.
"of 413 physicians surveyed, fully 19% said they would be willing to administer the lethal injection". Any participation in executions by medical professionals should be a matter for of their own individual conscience.
40,000 to 100,000 innocents die, every year, in the US because of medical misadventure or improper medical treatment. (2)
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US since 1900.
Do no harm? The doctor doth protest too much, methinks.
3. PROPER TRAINING
In every state, there are hundreds or thousands of people trained for IV application of drugs or the taking of blood.
It appears that some 500-1000 innocent patients die, every year, in the US, due to some type of medical misadventure, with anesthesia. (2)
Do no harm?
I am unaware of evidence that shows criminal justice professionals are more likely to commit some error in the lethal injection process than are medical professionals in IV application.
Furthermore, even with errors in lethal injection, those cases resulted in the death of the inmate - the intended outcome for the guilty murderer.
In the errors of medical professionals, we are speaking of a large number of deaths and injuries to innocent patients - the opposite of the intended outcome.
1) 'Physician Involvement in Capital Punishment: Simplifying a Complex Calculus", Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2007;82:1043-1046. www(DOT)mayoclinicproceedings.com/inside.asp?a=1&ref=8209e1
2) see "Deaths from Medical Misadventure" at www.wrongdiagnosis.com/m/medical_misadventure/deaths.htm and "Health Grades Quality Study: Patient Safety in American Hospitals, July 2004" www.healthgrades.com/media/english/pdf/HG_Patient_Safety_Study_Final.pdf
originally written May, 2005. Updated as merited.
copyright 2005-2007
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters e-mail sharpjfa(at)aol.com, 713-622-5491 Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites:
homicidesurvivors.com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www(dot)dpinfo.com
www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
joshmarquis(dot)blogspot.com/
www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.org/
www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/ (Sweden)
www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html
Permission for distribution of this document is approved as long as it is distributed in its entirety, without changes, inclusive of this statement.
you write:
"The fact that hundreds of death row inmates have been proven innocent after having been sentenced to death also gives substantial support to this viewpoint."
Fact checking is really important.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have been released upon post conviction review. There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
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