Lethal injection under scrutiny - January 08, 2008
Posted for Heidi Ledford
The US Supreme Court heard opening arguments yesterday for a controversial case concerning the method used to execute criminals by lethal injection. The case specifically concerns executions in the state of Kentucky, but would have ramifications for the other 35 states that use the method*.
A lawyer for two death row inmates is arguing that the three-drug cocktail used for lethal injections could violate the US Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments
The verdict may not be decided for months, and early reports indicate that the court is split on the matter. Medical journals, however, are not. Several, including the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA have all published commentaries weighing in against lethal injection, continuing their tradition of opposing the death penalty.
The case is predicated upon studies such one published last spring in PLoS Medicine, which argue that the three-drug cocktail used for lethal injections can cause undue suffering. The first drug renders the prisoner unconscious, the second paralyzes them, and the third stops their heart.
If the timing or dosage of the first (a short-acting barbiturate called thiopental) is inaccurate, the prisoner could still be awake as they slowly asphyxiate when the second drug (pancuronium bromide) stops their breathing. They’ll also feel the third drug (potassium chloride), which reportedly makes the recipient feel as if their veins were on fire.
In Kentucky, it is illegal to use this cocktail to euthanize animals.
Criticisms of the cocktail have been around for years, begging the painful question: why do so many of the states that administer lethal injections continue to use the troubled cocktail? Why not switch to a single, high-dose injection of barbiturate?
The New York Times looked into this and the answers were predictably frustrating. No state wanted to be the first one to make the change, they found. And a megadose of barbiturates could cause muscle contractions. That would presumably be painless for the prisoner, yes, but perhaps unpleasant for witnesses to observe.
Yesterday, Justice John Paul Stevens posed the question to the lawyer for the state of Kentucky, who offered a different, though no more satisfying, explanation in defense of the triple-drug cocktail: “It takes a very long time to die with [a] one-drug protocol,” he said.
* Some reports highlight that 36 states use lethal injection but fewer use the three drug method.
