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If death is one of life’s inevitables, so are lawsuits when it comes to the death penalty.
Texas has 317 convicted murderers on death row, but because of a company’s decision last week to stop making the key drug for lethal injections, Texas only has enough of the potion to execute two.
Consequently, Texas and 32 other states will be watching closely as Ohio prepares to execute Johnnie Baston. They will be watching not only to see how well the substitute drug works, but how entangling the legal battle is going to be.
Baston, 36, convicted of killing a wig shop owner in 1994, is scheduled to arrive at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility’s “Death House”on March 10. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll be strapped to a gurney, allowed to make a final statement, and injected with a dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital.
The drug, chemically similar to a drug used to euthanize horses, is the latest flashpoint in the debate over the death penalty. Texas, which has the busiest death row in the country, expects to run out of its supply of lethal drugs in March.
“The supply expires in March, so we’ll have to look to some sort of alternative,” said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Jason Clarke. “We’ll likely end up changing the drug. We’ll look to what other states use successfully.”
Too bad hanging went out of style in Texas…
Oh, the humanity of it all!
Geez, maybe they’ll have to stop KILLING people.
And in case anybody thinks I’m a bleeding hear liberal, I’m not.
Imagine you’re a killer condemned for the rest of your days, for the rest of your fuckin’ life, however long that might be, to spend in a stinking cell with only your contrition for company.
You did the crime and now you got do do the time, and it stretches out in front of you, year and years of violent offenders of time in front of you.
Killing’s too goos for you.
Can’t they just put them in a car, duct tape a vacuum cleaner hose to the exhaust pipe, run it into a window gap and tape the gap? It works for so many other people.
/and put the video on YouTube
#2 While some few may wish to die and get it over with most prefer to live. Keeping them around is very expensive and very dangerous. Most would kill anyone for little or no reason. The guards and their fellow prisoners are in constant danger from them.
I fail to see what the problem is. Let them drink hemlock. Heck there are thousands of chemicals some of them used for recreational purposes that they can OD on.
While I think it is much to kind for at least some of them a fatal amount of heroin or cocaine is not that hard to arrange and should be enjoyable in a way if you want them to die happy. Much more peasant than what my father went through during his last 7 days before heart failure finally took him.
#4 deowell said “Keeping them around is very expensive”
In point of fact it costs the state more to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life. Much of the money spent on executions goes into lawyers pockets.
#5 You’re right the money goes in the lawyers’ pockets. But not for the executions. It’s for the appeals (which are automatic and mandatory for death-sentences). The executions are relatively cheap.
As for the drug shortage – have they considered using heroin? There’s no shortage, and overdosing shouldn’t be difficult.
Get a friken bathtub, some water and a few toasters, problem solved….
Is killing them a punishment or just a way of removing an incompatible element from society?
Hes 36 and he committed the crime in 1994? That means he was 19.. you cant kill (murder) someone for something they did when they were 19, he was just a kid ffs.
Johnnie Baston didn’t kill anyone. He was framed. I could save him, but I’m not going to.
Coming from a country that doesnt have “The Death Penalty”, where our state does NOT have the right to kill people…
Does anyone else think this is a strange story?
So, Ohio is going to TRY and kill some guy, and the rest are all rubber neckers, wanting to see what actually happens?
What does “Capital punishment” achieve? If it really served as a deterrent, how come all these prisons in the USA are so overflowing? Why are the most “conservative” states, who believe in “limited government” (as opposed to “infinite government”?) the ones most likely to have the right to KILL citizens?
Why do these people scheduled to be killed wait around, costing XX-XXX Thousand a year to keep alive, while they wait to be killed? Why not just kill them all instantly, and on the same day?
Really, why kill people in the first place?
Didnt the idea of “Executioners” go out of style a few centuries back?
# 4 deowll said, “I fail to see what the problem is. Let them drink hemlock.”
That’s exactly the problem. Hemlock would do the trick, if prepared properly, but causes a painful death. We have this thing call the Constitution that outlaws a cruel death. Now, we have that pain, even for a short time, is cruel. Personally, I find death by injection to be extremely cruel though mostly painless.
The justice system is sort of locked in to sodium thiopental in it’s executions because it’s been approved. Not because there is no adequate substitute or even better choice. As suggested above, an overdose of narcotics would do the trick.
Also remember the Na thiopental is only to make the prisoner sleep. We could do the same with good ole IV Valium. Generally, what kills the prisoner are the next two drugs in cocktail: pancuronium bromide (ever heard of curare?) and potassium chloride. The first paralyzes the respiratory muscles and the second stops the heart. We consider that making someone suffer through the pain of suffocation or the agony of a cardiac arrest to be inhumane thus we let them sleep through it. Ain’t we nice?
Ohio (and a couple of other states, I believe) uses a single drug injection of Na thiopental. A massive overdose accomplishes the task of putting the prisoner into a coma-like state and stopping breathing. Seems a false economy to me. Neither of the other drugs is any more difficult to use nor especially expensive.
Since the manufacture of sodium thiopental has ceased I see no medical reason why it cannot be replaced with sodium pentobarbitol. But you can see the lawyers lining up to claim it’s cruel and unusual to use an ANIMAL drug on humans…
Geeze. What the hell wrong with just shooting them? That is how China does it.
The guillotine rocks!
They should use the Guillotine. They’ll never run out of gravity.
Bullets are still quite cheap.
Here in Ohio, We’ve been number two to Texas in executions for quite some time. Soon we’ll be able to proclaim we’re number one! We’re number one!
I don’t believe in the death penalty.
I want ’em to suffer until they beg for their bodies to please let ’em die at last.
Killing too good for ’em.
Yeah, I’m an evil sumbitch!
the really stupid thing is we have a lot of the drug but it expires in march. who gives a damn if they use expired drugs the’re killing him so what if it has side effects the main effect is going to be death
The argument about cost doesn’t cut it.
Consider how much a cruise missile costs versus a life sentence.
Now I know some of your are thinking would it’d be neat to watch their expression as they are strapped to a cruise missile homing in on Osama Bin Laden ‘s front porch in Des Moine, but its much cheaper to keep ’em alive…
Besides, I don’t want to be killed so I’m not killing anybody.
Case Closed.
COLT 45, just aim right between the eye at very close range.
No need for serum at all.
Death penalty has been around since the dawn of man. Used endlessly in many societies.
Do we still have violent crime. Yep.
So not much of a deterrent. People will still do as they please if they feel they can get away with it or just plain don’t care.
It is the human that has to adopt for its own self that murder is not worth anything. No law, no death penalty, nothing external is going to change that.
Stick them in prison. No hope of parole, make them work making office furniture. At least get something out of them.
Cursor_
Hanging is still in style in Iran, and most of the Muslim world for that matter. We should be just like them … right John?
# 21 Cursor_ said, “Stick them in prison. No hope of parole”
Well, we know THAT’s not a deterrent, either, don’t we? Forced labor? Heez, that’s what we complain about China, isn’t it? I’m not saying I have the answers ’cause I don’t. Just saying we have a real opportunity to run out of prison space.
Hey, Texans ought to be amused by strangulation, disembowelling, decapitation, burying them alive, death by a thousand cuts, burning at the stake, marriage to a Republican, boiling, flaying alive etcetera.
Just look up the word “medieval” in a search engine, subcategory: Texans.
Re #22 Stoning is also still used in Iran.
#2 has a point. Let them rot for a long, long time.
Yea, those liberals are really tough on crime. They support life in prison, and it’ll be a punishment worse than death, with the liberals in charge.
Oh yea, the liberals also support the death penalty for terrorists.
If they would use scientific testing then half of death row would be found not guilty.
It’s too embarrassing for the justice system to contemplate.
Well that, and the prosecution’s resume. And the judge’s resume. And the complaining officer’s resume.
OK right, never mind.
They should contract with Coke to get one of their new dispensing machines. It has at least 100 combinations of soft drink flavors. So think what they could do with this other lethal death serum cocktail. Choose the flavor or your death! Give a whole new meaning to “Death by Chocolate” (drink).
Ya know, the next mental defective who thinks about killing someone, never stops to think, “Hey, the last guy they caught, got executed. So I better not do it, if I don’t wanna die!” No, they’re more like all the fools who pay for a Lottery ticket, thinking they have a ghost of a chance at winning. Murderers all think they have a very good chance of “never getting caught”. And even if they are, so what, death may be preferred to living their lives. So let’s reward their behavior, and that of future killers, by offing them quickly.
And by Quickly, I mean after a long and expensive murder trial. Because in the end, that’s the real reason for death penalty trials. The huge price tag they command for the lawyers and judges involved. You don’t think they’re for such punishment, purely out of the goodness of their hearts, do you? HA!