The Chaos Behind California Executions
“Operational Procedure No. 770,” the state’s name for execution by lethal injection, is performed in a dark, cramped room by men and women who know little, if anything, about the deadly drugs they inject under extreme stress.
Thousands of pages of depositions and four days of testimony last week in a federal courtroom here provided the most intimate portrait yet of a state’s lethal injection methods.
Witnesses depicted executions by lethal injection — long considered a more humane alternative to the gas chamber or the electric chair — as almost haphazard events, and medical experts on both sides could not rule out the possibility that one or more inmates had been conscious and experienced an excruciating sensation of drowning or strangulation before death.
Describing the pressure executioners feel and the surreal atmosphere in which they work, one executioner explained: “There’s no other place in the world that you’re asked to start an IV for that purpose.”
“I saw Eddie’s eyes close, and I thought to myself, ‘Here we go. This is it.’ Almost immediately his eyes opened again, not fully, more than halfway up but not completely. His eyes remained open for the entire execution.”
She said his throat began to throb and pulsate like a lizard’s, and his chest heaved and strained so violently she thought he would fall off the gurney.
I hope to see the satanic impluses of conservatives on this thread explaining why we need state sanctioned torture/murder and how removing the legal barries to executing people is a good thing. Maybe we will even get a poster to include the idea that if we just put the executions on tv they would start to have the desired effect. Or, if we got rid of the host of legal appeals, execution would not cost as much God, errr… money… Any Takers? How about execution for pedophiliacs and their enablers? What about war crimes and treason, are those good reasons to execute people?
Well, since the loss of life as punishment is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, there is no valid case that can be made (without amendment) of it being unconstitutional. The question is how painless should the putting to death be for somebody whose victim didn’t have the same luxury of debate over the pain they experienced in theirs.
#2 I tend to disagree, I think the question is ‘How certain can we ever be that we have the correct person?’ Too many times the wrong person has been punished for a crime committed by someone else. I wouldn’t like it to be me or even you.
An eye for an eye leaves us all blind.
OK, for or against the death penalty that’s fine, it’s your right to disagree.
But what I can’t understand is why this choice of drugs to do the deed? When patients are euthanized or when they want to get hooked up to Dr. Kevorkian’s suicide machine, they use different drugs. They simply fall asleep and never wake up. Hell, even a lethal dose of morphine would do the trick and also the person wouldn’t feel a thing. As it stands now, these drugs they use the patient sometimes isn’t even totally out when the big doses come…so they do in fact feel pain sometimes.
I’m not talking about if they deserve it or not or what crime they committed…I’m talking about a totally humane way to “put someone to sleep”. We do it all the time with dogs and cats in a humane way, why not dispose of people the same way? Isn’t their death enough, or is the suffering and pain and torture part of their sentence?
“Isn’t their death enough, or is the suffering and pain and torture part of their sentence?”
I wouldn’t say that my intention would be to inflict pain, but whether or not they experience any is not something I’m particularly concerned with.
In the end, we are talking about something which is relatively quick and free from unnecessary pain. We aren’t talking about being drawn and quartered, which is the type of historical punishment that the 8th Amendment was intended to outlaw.
Yes, but still. Why not just a lethal dose of morphine? Why not just the same thing we put dogs and cats to sleep with? Why not just erase any question at all of if they suffered or not. Take it totally out of the equation.
I’m not arguing about who deserves what or who the person was. Just looking at it from a practical point of view. If you have to execute someone, just do it in a way to where their “being” is erased. Lethal dose of morphine, they pass out…they’re gone. Dispose of the body and move on. Even make it an assembly line if you like. No pain, no muss, no fuss.
They’re anesthetized with the same drugs used for surgery. Death comes in a large infusion of KCl which interrupts muscle/nerve action, including the heart. This high dose of Potassium also destroys cellular membranes making organ donation impossible. Any execution can go wrong. The guillotine could jam, or require several hoists and releases if the blade was dulled. Wouldn’t it be better to just walk in a cell with a pistol behind your back and shot the prisoner in the head?
Why not simplify it even more? Get rid of executions. An added benefit is a reduction in the cost of the whole execution process, no more executing innocent people, we stop sounding like hipocrites when we complain about other country’s rights records, and so on.
Tom, #4…“An eye for an eye leaves us all blind.”
A good beginning makes a good end.
You reap what you sow.
A stich in time saves nine.
WHy does it always have to be ‘all or none’? There are cases where there is absolutely no mistake that the perpetrator is guilty. Kill those nuts and move on. Where there is enough evidence for a conviction but the appeals provision doesn’t seem ridiculous for that person, keep them in jail.
#9: because many people disagree with the punishment for murdering another person being three squares a day, free health-care, and time to work on your Bachelor’s degree at taxpayers’ expense.
I can only speak for me, but while I am more than willing to grant forgiveness to a thief after they have served their punishment, I have no interest in rehabilitating murderers. I would either have them isolated in a cell for the rest of their lives, or put to death. I have no preference between the two besides my wish that it be the least expensive option (in dollars) for the rest of us.
A firing squad makes this a lot quicker, but it takes away the “clinical” aspect that keeps the death penalty acceptable to the few on the left that support it.
French Guiana prison colonies were horrible, but maybe worth another look. Why not dump violent lifers without a chance of parole on a secure island with the basics and let them fend for themselves. Basically that’s what we do in maximum security prisons anyway, it just costs a fortune.
The most painless, certain, non-cruel and non-unusual way of execution would be a 357 magnum bullet right into the medulla oblongata. What remained of the brain after the hydraulic shock would feel no pain. The execution could not be photographed.
The social argument against capital punishment was that seeing the violence would traumatize and harden the public to more violence. That argument is obsolete considering the terrible violence that can be seen on television, movies and video games. It does have effect, as the Columbine murders show, but liberals consider it their right under the first amendment to traumatize the general public.
The personal value argument against capital punishment says that the criminal is of infinite value and so should not be killed. But the victim who was also of infinite value was treated as rubbish and killed. It was an infinitely evil crime. Are the infinities of equal value?
The possible doubt argument is a violation of the legal/historical method of deriving truth beyond a Reasonable doubt. Remember how Hinkley was found not guilty of trying to kill Reagan because of possible doubt that he was insane — only to be found sane by the first shrink he was sent to? He could have walked right then if everyone had strictly followed the law.
There is a need for the public to feel that justice has been mostly done to feel that it is a just enough society to keep them from privately taking justice into their own hands, secretly. In Baghdad, there is so little justice meted out, they are on the verge of a civil war. Out in the countryside of the U.S., justice is sometimes meted out by shotgun when the liberal activists get too pushy. The liberals murder back, using the ATF and FBI.
Why not dump violent lifers without a chance of parole on a secure island with the basics and let them fend for themselves.
Survior: Devil’s Island.
Hey, let’s be honest, there ARE people out there who would watch.
Hangings and other executions used to be public spectacles.
“Traditional Values” /cynic
J/P=?
I like the old medieval dungeons for that gnarley old grunge look, with open flame torches and a fresh bale of hay every year or so for hygiene. But if I ever get caught doing something that merits the death penalty just give me my choice; I’ll probably opt for something like an overdose of banana pudding laced with something deadly but odorless and tasteless. Hell, what’s his name drank hemlock; I wonder how that tastes?
The only thing about death that concerns me is I don’t want it to hurt. I want a gentle departure, none of that being stretched on the rack stuff for me. Too sweaty, and yeah, it hurts.
The reason to kill convicted murderers is because we do not have the ability to keep them locked up and away from posing a danger to innocents. Below is a casual list of at least 8 escaped murderers I’ve Read about in recent headlines. Also below is a list of 17 convicted killers who were let go to kill again. I’m sure these lists are not complete. I don’t expect them to remain posted.
You can talk about the possibility of an expensive and lengthy trial resulting in a killer (most having pretty dangerous histories) wrongly put to death. (It’s a tragedy, like when we mistakenly put people to death in hospitals.) But you must also talk about – and balance that out – with the number of innocent by-standers killed or harmed by the killers who are not put to death or are freed. Who speaks for those innocents?
By the way, I don’t understand why executions don’t first start with a knock-out gas like they do before surgery. It seems most of the problems stem from attempts to locate a blood vessel.
RBG
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two men charged in a fatal shooting … escaped aboard a city bus, authorities said.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — FBI agents and U.S. marshals are searching for a convicted murderer who escaped Wednesday from a federal prison in Louisiana.
CHICAGO (AP) — Six inmates — including two who are charged with murder — escaped during the night by overpowering a guard…
PHENIX CITY, Alabama (AP) — Police in Alabama and Georgia searched Monday for two murder suspects who fled from an overcrowded jail after overpowering guards…Johnny Brewer, a convicted murderer …110 miles away from their maximum-security prison
(CNN) — A Texas death row inmate escaped from the Harris County Jail in Houston on Thursday…
WILKES-BARRE, Pa., Oct. 11 — A suspect in the murders of five people whose bodies were found in his backyard escaped from jail by climbing 60 feet down a rope made of bedsheets…
Lyons identified the escapees as convicted murderer Kevin Gil, 31, of Boston; Philip J. Dick, 23, convicted of attempted murder; and Christopher McNeil, 35, of Willards, Md.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Two prisoners escaped Sunday from a maximum security prison in Athens using a helicopter, authorities said. (one was a convicted killer.)
Why aren’t all democrats against death penalty!
I mean come on. No studies show it helps lower crime rate to have death penalty, on the contrary it fosters more frustration in society by the lower class who do commit most of the crimes because of their state of desperation.
I say also the international community should force China to stop doing their mass and barbaric executions. Hopefully before Beijing olympics 2008 this issue will be resolved.
Murders That Could Have Been Averted By Capital Punishment
Charles Fitzgerald killed a deputy sheriff and was released after serving just 11 years, and in 1926 murdered a California policeman.
• In 1931, “Gypsy” Bob Harper, who had been convicted of murder, escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons. After being recaptured, he then killed the prison warden and his deputy.
• In 1936, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported the case of a Florida prisoner who committed two murders, received clemency for each, and then murdered twice more. On March 17, 1971 Hoover told a congressional subcommittee that 19 of the killers responsible for the murder of policemen during the 1960s had been previously convicted of murder.
• In 1952, Allen Pruitt was arrested for the knife slaying of a newsstand. In 1965, he was charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent
• In 1957, Richard Biegenwald murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey. He was convicted and later paroled. After which he shot and killed an 18-year-old Asbury Park, New Jersey girl. He also killed three other 17-year-old New Jersey girls and a 34-year-old man.
• A man convicted of murder in Oklahoma pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given life instead. He later killed a fellow inmate.
• In 1972, Arthur James Julius was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin.
• In 1976, Jimmy Lee Gray (who was free on parole from an Arizona conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl) kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl.
• Also in 1976, Timothy Charles Palmes was on probation for an earlier manslaughter conviction when he and two accomplices robbed and brutally murdered a Florida furniture store owner.
• In 1978, Wayne Robert Felde, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman. At the time, he was a fugitive from a work release program in Maryland, where he had been convicted of manslaughter.
• In 1979, Donald Dillbeck was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriffs deputy. In 1983, He escaped and stabbed a woman to death at a Tallahassee shopping mall.
• In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott (who had murdered a fellow prison inmate) and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison. Abbott later stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York.
• On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by inmates who were both serving life terms for previously murdering inmates.
• On December 7, 1984 Benny Lee Chaffin kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl. He had been convicted of murder once before in Texas, but not executed
• Thomas Eugene Creech, who had been convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981.
Kenneth Allen McDuff 1998 — freed from death row and then returned after killing again.
Autopsy Set for Priest Killed in Prison. Joseph L. Druce, 37, who received a life sentence in 1989 for murder, armed robbery and other counts, was placed in isolation and will face murder charges in the priest’s death.
That’s it RBG? Out of the billions of people in the world, you can really come up with that puny little list? I thought it was rampant and an epidemic! Now you’ve convinced me that we really don’t need the death penalty at all.
AND you had to go back to 1931 in dredging up your list? Maybe if that list was from last year…or even the last two years…but from 75 years ago? Why not make a list of criminals that went to prison for nothing but breaking and entering or non-violent mugging, then when they got out they killed someone…showing that if we had the death penalty for theft they too wouldn’t have killed someone.
Come on…that’s it? Pfft….
Public Hanging
Hey, I agree with you.
That is the response to those who would not execute killers because somewhere, at sometime, a long trial – involving peers and evidence and multiple appeals – might still have mistakenly resulted in a wrongful execution.
I also say That’s it? Pffft. But I’ll stack my Pffft against yours any day.
RBG
Don’t kill people! Even if they are the worst criminals in the world. Lock them up forever. Put them to work to pay their stay in prison. Make them suffer like hell. But don’t kill them… In case they are really guilty they will suffer way much more than just being killed. In case there was an error in judgment, no matter how hard they suffered whilst in prision there is at least an attempt to try to compensate on them. Well, at least they get their lives back and the country should pay them a hell lot of money. There are innocent people put to death and this is intolerable.
Life enprisonment is absolutely fair. Killing is not.
This Innocence Project is great. Now we’ll know the right guys are being put to death.
RBG
That is the response to those who would not execute killers because somewhere, at sometime, a long trial – involving peers and evidence and multiple appeals – might still have mistakenly resulted in a wrongful execution.
RBG, in your blind hatred, I don’t think you understand what you are saying.
Very few people get a fair trial and poor people accused of murder get among the worst. Public defenders are over worked, under paid, and under financed.
Peers end up being a cross section of society, not ones actual peers. Notoriously, poor blacks are kept off of juries hearing cases involving poor blacks.
Appeals are the worst aspect of our justice system. The onus is back on the accused to prove the trial was wrong, and that is accepted rarely. New evidence must demonstrate that it would have been sufficient to change the jury’s decision, not if in conjunction it would add reasonable doubt.
Secondary appeals will only look at aspects of law, not evidence. Overturning a conviction on a legal appeal is very rare.
I notice that you haven’t reference anyone that sat on death row and was later shown to be innocent.
This is total BS. I’m for capital punishinment, but not using the neat and clinical way that Texas has perfected. State executions, like war, is a brutal and ugly business. Trying to make it something less is wrong. It should never be taken lightly.
The bottom line is that capital punishment should be a rare and legal procedure that the citizens of the state use when dealing with a criminal convicted of crimes so horiffic that the person has, in the eyes of the state, does not deserve to live amount humans on earth.
When a judgement of capital punishment has been issued and upheld, then the execution of the criminal should be swift. They should be taken out and shot at dawn by a firing squad. The other prisoners, media, and public, are free to stand behind a wall and hear the crack of the rifles. That sound will remind people that the state means business.
I don’t see how being shot by a firing squad can be considered cruel and unusual. If the convict somehow survives for a few minutes, then shoot him again until dead. It is simple and straight forward.
It pisses me off that we put our state employees at risk babysitting cons on death row, dealing with dangerous chemicals to perform an execution, or making it nice and pleasent for the convict. Tieing them to a post and shooting them full of lead is the fastest, safest, and most just way to dispatch human scum.
This case is a result of a legal challenge made my Michael Morales, one of two people who murdered a classmate of mine back in 1981. He was scheduled to die last February, and after several failed attempts to put him to death, doctors refused to administer the leathal injection, was allowed to live some more on death row waiting for “another” day in court.
He admitted his guilt in this case, this is not the wrong guy. I’ve known several dozen people in my life who were pro-life, anti-death penalty, and then upon the brutal murder of a loved one suddenly change their beliefs. Sort of the opposite of these murders, who suddenly find religion and forgiveness when they find themselves sitting in a cell waiting for death after a hideous crime.
Morales brutally murdered Terri Winchell by “hammering, stabbing and raping” her. Both of her attackers raped, and his cousin got off on life because he cooperated with authorities. They left Terri after all of this brutality still breathing to die alone in a remote vineyard, her naked mutilated body being found days later.
So I ask why does this person deserves a “painless” death? What’s a little gasping and drowning in return for the mutilation inflicted on Terri? There are some people who are so totally evil that they should be removed from society permanently. And if you shake your head in disagreement, may you never experience being close to someone who is brutally murdered.
Two of my friends were murdered in the span of two years, both brutally. I challenge anyone to read the following account of this case and tell me this animal does not deserve a painful slow death:
http://tinyurl.com/ld553
http://www.recordnet.com will have a full accounting of this case on Tuesday, Oct. 3rd for more info.
And I guess you can’t see that your opinion would be the one most reasonable people would associate with blind hatred?
If what you are saying is true, investigative journalists would be on top of all that faster than you could say habeas corpus. If for no other reason than to sell more papers, make a name for themselves, or win a Pulitzer – not to mention the small possibility some of them might be interested in justice. Similarly politicians and lawyers. Oh, but I guess they’re all part of the great conspiracy to line their pockets or some such thing. So I call BS.
You’re right about that last point. Death seemed a little more irreversable and uncompensatable. And it’s irrelevant to the point being made. (ie: why we should or shouldn’t put killers to death.) I also didn’t mention the lives of relatives also destroyed by killers and escaped killers.
RBG