Lethal-Injection Ruling May Have to Wait

Source: Washington Post

Kentucky's method is similar to what has been used in more than 900 executions in the United States during the past 30 years: The condemned inmate is injected with sodium thiopental, to render him unconscious; pancuronium bromide, to paralyze the muscles; and potassium chloride, to cause cardiac arrest.

Inmates, and those supporting them from around the country, say that if the first drug does not work, the second induces a "terrifying, conscious paralysis" and the third an "excruciating burning pain as it courses through the veins," according to Verrilli.

Those objecting to the process said it would be better to inject inmates with a single, massive dose of barbiturates, the way animals are euthanized.

"I'm terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug is what seems to cause all the risk of excruciating pain, and seems to be almost totally unnecessary" except to ensure that the execution appears peaceful, Justice John Paul Stevens said.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010700618.html?hpid=sec-nation

---

They can't even legally euthanize animals the way they kill people in Kentucky. Sickening.

It´s difficult to find a good executing method, but bad ones are numerable.

death penalty, this three-drug cocktail truly in inhumane. It's been outlawed in Kentucky for animals. Values seem to be a bit screwed up!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17862519

animals? We're not animals, ya know? :sarcasm:

if the three-drug cocktail is considered inhumane for animals, why is it continually used on humans.

We clearly have a screwed-up society!

The only way to be 100% sure of instantaneous death is to totally obliterate the entire brain all at once.

Perhaps by smashing the head with a very fast hydraulic weight, or through flash-incineration.

It's not the most pleasant thing to imagine yourself facing-- certainly no picnic for observers, either-- but I'd bet you wouldn't feel a thing, and it would most definitely be over very quick.

if you shoot someone through the medulla oblongata, it's instant death.

... there is nothing as certain as an instant obliteration of the entire brain, all at once.

I'm thinking in terms of a device like the one they use to flatten large foundations at construction sites.

Or perhaps instantaneous vaporization of the head by super-heated plasma.

cooooooolllll. LOL

Or they will put it on TV.

A fuel-Air explosion would do it under a second, and nothing left to bury, but would leave a pretty mushroom cloud to admire on TV.

Which is why I'm all for locking them up. It's the cheapest solution by far and there is years to undo it. Here in Illinois we had a 50% innocent rate on Death Row.

But some prisons are so bad, that the death penalty might seem like a mercy killing.