The cruelty of lethal injection [View All]

Setting aside for the moment the arguments about whether we should allow our government to have the right to kill us, I'd like to talk about lethal injection.

Let me say right up front--*my* father was murdered; brutally, horribly, and randomly. When death-penalty advocates talk about "the victim's families", they're talking about people like me. I didn't *need* to see someone die in order to get past my father's death, and I have no respect for that particular argument. Now, on to the point.

I've believed for years that lethal injection has the potential to be inhumane and excruciatingly painful. I first developed this opinion back in 2000--the year my Mom went through chemotherapy to combat acute myelogenous leukemia. Chemo was hell for her, but she *still* has nightmares about the potassium chloride.

During the course of her chemo, Mom's blood potassium level dropped dangerously low. There was no time for the chewable pills to work--it was crucial to restore a proper electrolyte balance ASAP. So her docs decided to give her potassium chloride via IV.

They diluted it with saline. They decreased the drip rate. It didn't make a difference. She literally screamed in agony as that stuff hit her veins. She swears it felt like her arm was simultaneously burning in a fire and being crushed at the same time. They had to give her so much Demerol that it knocked her out cold in order to finish the drip. It took almost two hours, and left her arm red and swollen. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that potassium chloride is excruciatingly painful. As for my Mom...when she found that potassium chloride is used during lethal injection executions, she switched from being a staunch death penalty believer into a nearly frantic anti-death penalty activist. There's nothing like experience to bring on empathy enough to change a heart.

I know what it's like to lose someone to a violent crime, a brutal crime. I know the rage and the pain that come hand-in-hand with the grief. You lay awake at night trying not to think about what your loved one's last moments were like, praying they were somehow unconscious, hoping for at least that small mercy. I know what that's like. But we cannot torture people to death. We become no better than they are. That is NOT justice.

If our society's vengeance complex demands blood for blood, there is little that I can do to stop it, although I can try. In the meantime...if we give the state the power to deal out death, then we must also make sure they have the responsibility of doing it as painlessly as possible. It's not difficult to accomplish this. Use narcotics--morphine, dilaudid, methadone. That would be the most painless death we could possibly deliver.