Bring back the firing squad. Case closed.
9
What does this do to the bureaucrats whose job is to kill? I can be horrified by the crimes of the condemned, but I cannot, just CAN NOT ask some faceless state employee to kill someone for me because I am appalled. It is worse, and more costly, than keeping perpetrators in prison until their natural death. I cannot imagine what happens to the man who straps a human being down or pushes the plunger. It dehumanizes us as a society to carry out such punishment.
13
I am appalled at the eye-for-an-eye callousness expressed in the comments. Ten percent exonerated after being murdered is too high; we wouldn't accept it as a reasonable standard for drug testing.
Moreover, Arkansas sounds like it is forcing through executions with the excuse of "just following orders". Deliberately killing a sentient being is murder, and reflects back on the person performing the act. It is forcing individuals to become murderers.
Moreover, Arkansas sounds like it is forcing through executions with the excuse of "just following orders". Deliberately killing a sentient being is murder, and reflects back on the person performing the act. It is forcing individuals to become murderers.
12
I do not favour the death penalty, but do appreciate the sentiments of some of those in favour. What is difficult to understand is why drug addicts find it so easy to end their lives using drugs without even trying, but the U.S. states using this method find it so difficult to dispense with their condemned.
10
Nowhere does anyone discuss the effect that executions have on those who carry them out, or on their families. Should anyone ever be allowed to volunteer to participate in killing another human being, no matter how heinous that person's crimes? If the criminal suffers during a botched execution, what is effect on the execution team? Surely this is another reason why death by injection should be abolished. Human life is frail and easily ended, but we have constructed an elaborate, deeply flawed process purely to make it look painless and antiseptic. We have not considered the well-being of those charged with carrying out the execution, and these botched chemical horror shows have made it all the worse.
12
As the authors report here, the argument of the availability of the drugs is not one that stands. Let us look further for the rush to execution. In a March 3 NYTimes article Gov. Hutchinson stated: “I would love to have those extended over a period of multiple months and years, but that’s not the circumstances that I find myself in,” said Mr. Hutchinson, who took office in 2015. “And, again, the families of the victims that have endured this for so many years deserve a conclusion to it.” This gets us closer to the real issues: revenge and its political benefits. Yet do we insist that rapists be raped in turn by agents of the state? Do we insist that abusers be abused by agents of the state? No. We have authorized the state to punish by various means. We have not authorized the state to be an agent of revenge except in capital cases. Somehow we have bought into the idea that families of victims can only move on with their lives with their appetite for revenge (tit for tat) sated. But is this really true? Who really gains?
21
Simply legalized murder and revenge. By doing this, the "people" are no better than the convicted. We are still in the dark ages in so many ways.
25
I have often wondered why states must use doses of 2 very expensive drugs to execute criminals chemically. Every state comes into possession of massive quantities of opioids every month. As everyone keeps saying it is very easy to overdose & die while taking opioids. So, why not just give all criminals to be executed massive amounts & just let them nod away, until dead? If any state wants to be cruel, they can after a few minutes administer the antidote, bring them back to consciousness, let them wonder for a bit, then inject them again, letting them just slip away. They will even get a momentary high on the way out the door. Cost? Zilch, zero, nada, nothing.
Since *45 wants to save money on everything this will be perfect for him. He should sign an EO stating all states must use confiscated opioids to execute all on death row. If they get the condemned addicted in the years before their execution, then put them through withdrawal every so often on a random basis, those who consider it too easy a death for them, would be appeased. Then the day before the execution all injections stop, & when brought out they are in full agonizing withdrawal. Strapped to a gurney in front of the window where victims, victims families, & their own families can watch for several hours before the execution. Hey execution shouldn't be totally comfortable. Let em beg for it.
Since *45 wants to save money on everything this will be perfect for him. He should sign an EO stating all states must use confiscated opioids to execute all on death row. If they get the condemned addicted in the years before their execution, then put them through withdrawal every so often on a random basis, those who consider it too easy a death for them, would be appeased. Then the day before the execution all injections stop, & when brought out they are in full agonizing withdrawal. Strapped to a gurney in front of the window where victims, victims families, & their own families can watch for several hours before the execution. Hey execution shouldn't be totally comfortable. Let em beg for it.
8
It seems the term "cruel and unusual" is applicable.
14
Modern American politicians, particularly on the right, seem to feel a need to prove their seriousness by demonstrating their cruelty while meanwhile claiming to be Christians. I don't understand how this translates into votes!
33
Proponents of death penalty are the best reason why it should be abolished. Unwittingly they demonstrate exactly the influence it has on society: coarsening public discourse, generating confusion between vengeance and justice, and helping to raise a new generation of killers. Juts look at the sheer bloodthirstiness exhibited in some comments below? Everybody who is baying for the blood of murderers should be given a gun and asked to execute them personally. And if he agrees, he should be immediately removed from the community because he is dangerous to everybody around him (I am deliberately using the masculine pronoun because self-righteous violence is more common among men but women are not immune either). If you shed blood, you are tainted, even if it is in good cause. Ancient cultures performed speciali rituals of purification for soldiers coming back from war. But who will purify the jury who condemned a man to death, the judge who signed the sentence, and the executioner who pulled the trigger? These people are killers and I don't want them anywhere around me and my children. Every murderer believes that somehow he is "justified" in doing what he is doing. Worst atrocities in history have been committed by people who acted in the name of justice. So I don't care what crimes these men committed. Capital punishment breeds a new generation of killers. Don't believe it? Compare crime statistics in the US and in Europe.
26
"Prolonged suffering?" I'm sorry - where is the angst for the victims of these killers? It's my theory that murderers should be put to death exactly the way they committed their crimes. Lethal injections, even when they are botched and cause some poor devils "prolonged suffering," are too kind.
14
There's no evidence that those who promote a more humane mechanism for executions don't also agree that victims shouldn't have been victims in the first place or that the guilty shouldn't be punished, or that there isn't reasonable rage about the comparative circumstances.. Unfortunately, nothing that happens to these criminals has any benefit to the victim, and if their suffering soothes the souls of the grieving, that isn't a given or a consensus that can be relied upon as an argument. But just as important as either-the stress to the living and presumably innocent employees that are charged with committing the execution to a person strapped to a table, and having it botched, is probably more harm than should be inflicted on them.
4
Anti-capital punishment activists have long compromised their argument (in my opinion) by focusing on which drug(s) is OK to ensure painless death. If painless death is what is desired, simply use any number of opiates or various anesthesia drugs, evidently quite easy to get these days and cheap, too. If it weren't such a serious matter, it would be amusing to hear the moans about botched executions caused, it seems to me, by the very actions of the anti-execution folks.
The real issue for capital punishment is determination of guilt. There have been far too many documented cases of wrongful conviction. The question of executing people who, though convicted, are not guilty of the capital crime, should be the central question, not the easily solved question of which drug to inject.
The real issue for capital punishment is determination of guilt. There have been far too many documented cases of wrongful conviction. The question of executing people who, though convicted, are not guilty of the capital crime, should be the central question, not the easily solved question of which drug to inject.
14
I was given midazolam for a colonoscopy. It was supposed to make me so drowsy I would be unaware of what was happening. I was not in the slightest bit drowsy and experienced incredible pain. The next time I had a colonoscopy, I made sure I was anesthetized with propoful.
People's responses to midazolam and other benzodiazepines vary widely and are unpredictable. It cannot be relied upon to prevent lethal injection from being cruel and unusual. (Nothing can, but barbiturate come closer.)
People's responses to midazolam and other benzodiazepines vary widely and are unpredictable. It cannot be relied upon to prevent lethal injection from being cruel and unusual. (Nothing can, but barbiturate come closer.)
7
What would be wrong with a simple heroin overdose? The drug is plentiful, after all. There's no pain involved, it that's the objection. The convict would drift into endless sleep.
16
They're on death row. They are convicted murderers. Why not get it over with and save the expenses of maintaining their futile and dangerous existence?
Why is the guillotine not a humane form of execution? Or a bullet? Or a bomb?
Send them to a hospital. They kill 400,000 people a year. People who are killed in hospitals suffer much more than these coddled killers.
Why is the guillotine not a humane form of execution? Or a bullet? Or a bomb?
Send them to a hospital. They kill 400,000 people a year. People who are killed in hospitals suffer much more than these coddled killers.
15
Why can't states use Heroin from property rooms after it is no longer needed?
Why should the states be concerned about inflicting pain upon the condemmed prisoner during their execution? Is that pain more or less than the criminal inflicted upon his victim?
Why should the states be concerned about inflicting pain upon the condemmed prisoner during their execution? Is that pain more or less than the criminal inflicted upon his victim?
16
In your judgmental and emotional response to inflicting pain on the prisoner, you have forgotten about the staff. The team responsible for restraining and injecting and observing the prisoner in the immediate and confined space. What about their response- what they have to witness and participate in. As a nurse, involved in attendance of suffering individuals, it would be unbearable, even after 40 years of experience. The gravity of the crime is diminished in the presence of intense human suffering. You are asking this staff to experience an out of control physical event at close range. They are being punished too. It's inexcusable.
24
Maybe we should institute a Jonathan Swift solution to this problem. Put death row inmates into a For Profit prison. The businesses running these prisons will lobby against the death penalty since executing a prisoner will end years of financial gain on the prisoner. Explained to the Trump administration and the Republican right this would make sense. Plus, these prisoners can work for their keep on a chain gang as free legal labor
3
It is neither cruel nor killing, it was having justice done sooner not later.
6
An eye for an eye. Most, if not all of these and other death row inmates are actually receiving infinitely more mercy in their form of lethal punishment than the level of violence and pain that they inflicted on their victims. They are fortunate that the concept of equal justice measures for the crime committed no longer exist.
7
I have often wondered why not? In one of Robert Heinlein's books his characters are in a world where justice means suffering exactly what the victim does. His example was the trial of a man who ran down another on a rural road, & drove away. Found guilty he was taken to the same spot on the same road. His leg tied out from his body, run over with his car. Then no one helped him for the same amount of time no one was there to help the victim. By stopwatch. Then the ambulance & EMTs packed him up for the hospital, giving the same treatment the victim did. Whether he lived or died mattered not. He received the same wound, same time, same treatment. Also, if he lived the majority of all his income would go, for life to the victims family. If he died all his life insurance, bank accounts, & other assets would go to the victims family. Seems absolutely fair to me. Though the characters in the book decided to be very very careful (my guess this system would make most very careful) & leave permanently as soon as the could. Note, the accused had a trial. If found not guilty, no punishment.
2
Time to outlaw executions of any sort. It is not the answer nor is solitary confinement. These folks may have committed heinous crimes but this is not justice, to be condemned to death.
14
The good news about the use of midazolam (Versed) is that is induces amnesia, so that the executed person will not remember his discomfort.
7
So you think that means that after the executed dies he will not remember what happened in the Afterlife?
2
This all seems uniquely uncivilized and barbaric, Yet another sign that we are far indeed from being a Christian nation.
A questionable drug is expiring, so they have to create, and then speed up, an assembly line. These are MEN! They are not hogs to be butchered! Do it right, or don't do it at all. The State has been sitting on this issue for years, now it needs to cram in a decade worth of work in a few days.
This will have a few disasters in it before it's done. Guaranteed!
A questionable drug is expiring, so they have to create, and then speed up, an assembly line. These are MEN! They are not hogs to be butchered! Do it right, or don't do it at all. The State has been sitting on this issue for years, now it needs to cram in a decade worth of work in a few days.
This will have a few disasters in it before it's done. Guaranteed!
3
If execution of some criminals is SO all-fired important, then it's important enough to be performed by the governor her/himself, as a non-delegatable duty and responsibility. The condemned should die at the governor's own hands. And to ensure that the execution is carried out properly, every execution should be personally witnessed by the state's supreme justices, en banc. The governor and the justices should be present, in the execution chamber with the condemned, for the entire duration of the procedure, present when the condemned is brought into the room, and still present when his remains are finally removed from the room.
Their attendance and direct participation will provide a much greater level of personal responsibility and accountability for their part in the machinery of death. It will no longer be an academic subject to them, but a very real and very personal experience.
Their attendance and direct participation will provide a much greater level of personal responsibility and accountability for their part in the machinery of death. It will no longer be an academic subject to them, but a very real and very personal experience.
6
You have to consider the suffering inflicted on murder victims and their families in these cases. Some of these prisoners have been on death row for years.
I favor forgiveness and isolation for life. You cannot let murderers, some committing horrible crimes that turn your stomach, to mingle with the general prison population.
It's a terrible fate either way, but responsibility for taking another life must be enforced.
I favor forgiveness and isolation for life. You cannot let murderers, some committing horrible crimes that turn your stomach, to mingle with the general prison population.
It's a terrible fate either way, but responsibility for taking another life must be enforced.
3
It's pretty stupid for a Federal court to declare " “a substantial risk of serious harm.” when talking about a process used to execute someone. I would call the whole process an attempt to cause serious harm!
That being said, executions are immoral to begin with. Add to that the documented number of men sentenced to death incorrectly or inappropriately and it's clear to me we have executed innocent men. That alone proves we should not be executing anyone.
That being said, executions are immoral to begin with. Add to that the documented number of men sentenced to death incorrectly or inappropriately and it's clear to me we have executed innocent men. That alone proves we should not be executing anyone.
6
No executions are not immoral, they are the most moral thing. The prisoner is humanely death with a lifetime in jail is avoided. And as with every human activity mistakes might happen. Not to mention the family of victims.
2
This made me sick.
4
Since the State of Arkansas has proclaimed the Holy Bible as the state book, perhaps God can intervene in the many ponder-ables the state faces on its death row. Getting value for the tax dollars spent on killer meds is important. Even if they don't work? Were these convicts much of a problem until someone actually read the labels on the prescription book that comes with them from the drugstore?
I mean seriously, how can Arkansas square the death penalty with Jesus, who just happened to have experienced capitol punishment himself? Any paintings I have seen of His death always showed three crosses and they were full. It is a long stretch to justify that as: "gotta use the meds up before they expire". Which really is the irony of this whole issue: It is more important to ensure the death chemicals do not expire, or for the convicts they are being used upon to expire.
God did not create Arkansas to promote the good book that's for sure.
I mean seriously, how can Arkansas square the death penalty with Jesus, who just happened to have experienced capitol punishment himself? Any paintings I have seen of His death always showed three crosses and they were full. It is a long stretch to justify that as: "gotta use the meds up before they expire". Which really is the irony of this whole issue: It is more important to ensure the death chemicals do not expire, or for the convicts they are being used upon to expire.
God did not create Arkansas to promote the good book that's for sure.
9
The only reason to be against the death penalty for murderers is if the state realizes that there is a risk of killing an innocent person. That is something worth debating but as for the method of execution I don't understand all the controversy. If these murderers have committed horrible crimes taking lives of innocent people they should be executed in the most efficient manner possible. Bring back the firing squad this is quick and certain. We are not executing pets or people at the end of life who need compassion, we are executing the worst of the worst.
15
Are you a Christian? If so, how does what you write comport with Christianity?
8
Surlely we are all worthy of compassion. What about the shepherd who left the ninety and nine in search of the lost sheep? Not to show compassion says more about us then it does about the person who is sentenced to death.
2
@ Richard
How is that at all relevant? Are you Christian?
How is that at all relevant? Are you Christian?
1
I have zero sympathy for Mr. Lockett. In 1999, Lockett kidnapped, beat, and shot Stephanie Neiman, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate. He beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman did not back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police. After she stated she would go to the police, Lockett decided to bury her alive. Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her while she was still breathing. She died from two wounds from a shotgun fired by Lockett. In 2000, he was convicted of murder, rape, forcible sodomy, kidnapping, assault and battery and sentenced to death. My opinion: He was not entitled to a pain free execution. I am a liberal.
33
Well said! I, too, consider myself a Liberal on most things. But I cannot bring myself to feel sympathy for those who sit on death row. These are men and women who have been tried and found guilty of the most ghastly and horrific crimes imaginable - some so terrible I have difficulty even imagining them. I cannot accept these crimes to the level that I am willing to shrug them off and reaffirm their perpetrators right to live.
.
And I'm not alone. The death penalty is the Achilles heel of the Liberal Democrats. Most Americans recoil in horror at what death row inmates did to get there. Those who are against the death penalty tend to ignore the seriousness of the crimes, and it's not hard to see why: they are sickening and mortifying; the last thing anyone wants to think about. But not everyone is able to simply ignore these horrors. I've tried.
.
And I'm not alone. The death penalty is the Achilles heel of the Liberal Democrats. Most Americans recoil in horror at what death row inmates did to get there. Those who are against the death penalty tend to ignore the seriousness of the crimes, and it's not hard to see why: they are sickening and mortifying; the last thing anyone wants to think about. But not everyone is able to simply ignore these horrors. I've tried.
8
Beat me to it. If anything Lockett got what he deserved, too bad it couldn't happen to him twice.
5
Nonetheless he is a human being, and all humans are entitled by the constitution not to have cruel and unusual punishment. The concern for pain free execution goes back to cutting off heads instead of much more painful hanging, and then the guillotine. Your opinion is not liberal but reactionary and vengeful.
4
From experience inside it, I distrust the legal system to take the power to kill.
I distrust even the best of it, and Arkansas is not the best of it.
I can't help but think this spree will include murder, and be bungled.
I distrust even the best of it, and Arkansas is not the best of it.
I can't help but think this spree will include murder, and be bungled.
8
Well I trust that these individuals are guilty and dangerous not to mention expensive.
1
I guess the normal "tolerance" and "good ole Boy" networks of the State of Arkansas have gone the way of "grating" America. Meaning that is has fallen away slowly, in very small black pieces until it has disappeared, never to return. The same thing will likely happen to their coal industry, but is a smaller way. Luckily, I will not be here, nor my descendants........
Do Christian much, Bible Belt?
4
Given that we have entered some collective state of torpor and dispassionateness with the arrival of this new administration, it's hardly surprising that this should be occuring.
If anything, it only represents a small microcosm of what this country has become.
If anything, it only represents a small microcosm of what this country has become.
4
Reading these comments, as a European I think I am at last beginning to understand American way of life. It is a mix of derailed sense of justice, fascination for technology, 19th century frontier ethics, and consequent violence. Many people think the state could and should act like the individual - and this is common also amongst us "civilized" Europeans, at least as a gut reaction. What amazes me is that no commenter has mentioned the practice of euthanasia to end unendurable conditions as allowed nowadays in many European nations (unfortunately not yet in Italy) and some American states: the drugs employed offer a quick and painless death.
8
You have no idea and almost nobody who does not live here and travel here does.
1
To apply the death penalty and not possessing the right medication is almost a fun story. But to hurry with the executions to beat the deadline because this medication will be not available on the market anymore tops everything I have read in the last time.
Are those guys in Arkansas crazy or has the idea of human behavior fallen out of their brains.
May I remind the American public that 'giving the syringe' was a custom in the sick wards of German concentration camps to get rid of terminally sick inmates on the fast track. The killers used phenol then. And now the same style is used to execute prison inmates.
Morally stable states and countries don't do that. The death penalty has been abolished there because it has no effect on criminals, sorry to say. So be a little bit progressive on this theme.
Are those guys in Arkansas crazy or has the idea of human behavior fallen out of their brains.
May I remind the American public that 'giving the syringe' was a custom in the sick wards of German concentration camps to get rid of terminally sick inmates on the fast track. The killers used phenol then. And now the same style is used to execute prison inmates.
Morally stable states and countries don't do that. The death penalty has been abolished there because it has no effect on criminals, sorry to say. So be a little bit progressive on this theme.
12
Oh but it does, executed criminals commit no further crimes, use no further resources, so they are effected.
4
The death penalty is a barbaric remnant of the distant past. Sure, most (though not all) defendants sentenced to die committed heinous crimes. But so did defendants sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sometimes the crimes committed by the latter group are more heinous than their less fortunate counterparts. Sentencing is a crap shoot, depending on the jury, the trial venue, the quality of representation, ethnicity, class, and gender--women virtually never get executed.
Now we learn that Arkansas wants to kill eight people before the drugs run out. I'd say it's unbelievable, but it fits the tenor of the times. Stop it already.
Now we learn that Arkansas wants to kill eight people before the drugs run out. I'd say it's unbelievable, but it fits the tenor of the times. Stop it already.
9
No the death penalty is a logical extension that some are dangerous and we can't trust them not to commit other crimes in the future. The issue is that the process is too costly and takes far too long.
1
It is VERY, VERY much cheaper for the state, whatever state is involved, to execute prisoners than it is to house, feed, sustain, clothe, control and do all the other required things to sustain other large groups of human beings. 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. I am sure that the history of Nazi Gemany woud have the facts at finger-tips. I can only voice opinions and views on what I feel. To point out just one thing: the staff at a prison requires many things besides food, clothing and housing - obviously one thing would be pay, retirement costs and ALL associated costs. I stand by my other opinion as far as ONLY cost is concerned, killing prisoners found guilty, as opposed to life without parole, is much less costly, but certainly less humai
1
I, as many others, have witnessed the quiet, peaceful death of pets by injection. Why is this so hard to do for human animals?
30
It won't change the decisions of individual states on whether to dispatch convicted criminals to their eternal judgment, but here's how you, too can make hundreds of millions of dollars from this process.
You should go form a wing-nut policy group and pick one party to attack. The name ''Southern Poverty Law Center'' is taken but you can come up with something similar.
Then, get bundles of mailing lists and send every liberal college professor in the country such hate training materials as were used in the Middlebury College for-profit exercise recently.
Hate trainer Morris Dees has taken such events as a needless death and reaped hundreds of millions from uneducated progressives over the years. Simply tell these naifs that you can help keep that from happening again if they send enough money and you, too can be come magnificently wealthy.
While we laugh at religious organizations who get the poor to send them five bucks to get prayed over, this SPLC mass-mailing business model is the REAL deal if you want to end up rich from selling hatred and fear.
You should go form a wing-nut policy group and pick one party to attack. The name ''Southern Poverty Law Center'' is taken but you can come up with something similar.
Then, get bundles of mailing lists and send every liberal college professor in the country such hate training materials as were used in the Middlebury College for-profit exercise recently.
Hate trainer Morris Dees has taken such events as a needless death and reaped hundreds of millions from uneducated progressives over the years. Simply tell these naifs that you can help keep that from happening again if they send enough money and you, too can be come magnificently wealthy.
While we laugh at religious organizations who get the poor to send them five bucks to get prayed over, this SPLC mass-mailing business model is the REAL deal if you want to end up rich from selling hatred and fear.
2
Once again it is opposite day in fair Verona.
A cruel, backward state. The south remains a nightmare, far behind much of the country in it's lust to have the state kill people.
When there are thousands of stories of prisoners who were eventually released because DNA evidence proved them innocent,
it's sobering some states are still rushing to kill people.
When there are thousands of stories of prisoners who were eventually released because DNA evidence proved them innocent,
it's sobering some states are still rushing to kill people.
10
Oh how righteous! You of the higher intellect in the North, and on both coasts, please help us backward, uninformed, shoeless hicks.
The leftist progressive holier than thou attitude is arrogant and baseless. All the states and cities ruled for decades by them are crumbling hell holes of murder, and other forms of violent crime. As well as punishment for those who think differently. When you clean up your own nasty mess you can preach to what you believe are the worthless Among us.
A recent novel titled The People's Republic by Kurt Schlicter gives insight into a divided America where leftist progressive states have seceded to form a west coast & east coast nation with middle America remaining the USA. Fiction though it is it shows what could be. The story is not that imaginative except for the sub plot. It just shows what would happen if those who subscribe to demonstrably failed socialist policies are pursued along with a hateful PC culture run amok.
The leftist progressive holier than thou attitude is arrogant and baseless. All the states and cities ruled for decades by them are crumbling hell holes of murder, and other forms of violent crime. As well as punishment for those who think differently. When you clean up your own nasty mess you can preach to what you believe are the worthless Among us.
A recent novel titled The People's Republic by Kurt Schlicter gives insight into a divided America where leftist progressive states have seceded to form a west coast & east coast nation with middle America remaining the USA. Fiction though it is it shows what could be. The story is not that imaginative except for the sub plot. It just shows what would happen if those who subscribe to demonstrably failed socialist policies are pursued along with a hateful PC culture run amok.
4
Those who oppose these upcoming executions should volunteer to be a guard in a special prison section for these inmates, after appropriate training. There appears to be more than enough to staff three shifts a day for two month tours each year for the rest of the prisoners lives. This would free up current guards from the danger of death or serious injury from the depressing job of guarding these folks.
8
Hey, my coupon is about to expire, so we better kill these guys now !!
Sounds like about the worst reasoning ever.
Sounds like about the worst reasoning ever.
5
Is it really greater punishment to execute a murderer, than it is to lock them up for life? I would agree that any violent criminal should not be allowed to do such things as get married in jail or reproduce. Visitors and correspondence should be limited to lawyers and prior known acquaintances only. You could also allow a higher court to overrule parole boards for anyone with a murder conviction to provide for additional public safety. Our legal system has been found to be far less perfect than ever thought, when it comes to accurate convictions. It is time we admitted to our systemic weaknesses. It's also time we realized that holding someone for life is likely to be less expensive than spending years and millions of dollars trying to execute them. Murder is a heinous crime, while killing anyone unnecessarily is a heinous act.
5
There is always the chance that a murdered who is locked up for life will manage to escape and commit more murders or even murder a prison guard or other inmate. After all what punishment would they receive?
1
Three years ago, just after the execution of Jose Villegas, I wrote this poem which captures the utter cruelty of these exercises. When will this barbarity end?
http://www.versedaily.org/2015/itdoeskindofburn.shtml
http://www.versedaily.org/2015/itdoeskindofburn.shtml
2
It seems to me that if these inmates had been slowly going through the appeals process and now the pace has been picked up, then good.
Why do we allow such delay, it is expensive and itself a form of punishment. Why isn't justice uniformly swift?
Why do we allow such delay, it is expensive and itself a form of punishment. Why isn't justice uniformly swift?
6
I am sick to my stomach reading this. I thought it was bad enough that the imposition of the death penalty was so arbitrary that it depended on politics and geography and the whim of the state. But now to rush executions through because one of the drugs is about to expire--as if they are putting day-old bakery goods on the discount table--removes any supposed humanity from the equation and exposes it for the heartless, shameful business that it is.
12
Justice is blind, it should not have any humanity whatever you might consider that to be. I think executing them quickly is humane, in fact it should be done in private without the criminal having any idea that it is happening. Drugs in their meal sounds good to me.
1
This does not enhance the chances of Arkansas to improve it's lagging economy or cultural reputation. It's a shame because it's a beautiful state with wonderful people.....they deserve far better state leadership and management. Hard to believe this is a predominately Christian state....just how do they justify this with claims of being Christian...or American for that matter? Is this the reality of America run by the Koch brothers & the Waltons?
6
I looked up the people to be executed. Scary beyond words, multiple conviction for murder, usually women. A little pain is irrelevant.
10
Sure it does we conservatives will invest and vacation, now progressives can stay out.
It astounds me as a pulmonary critical care physician how the penal system and government have created such a fiasco.
As a physician who deals with sedation on a daily basis like my ED colleagues and my anesthesia colleagues, it takes a concerted effort and knowledge to come up with the right drug or drugs and dosages to sedate a patient without impairing their breathing or cardiovascular system when the goal is to avoid cessation of breathing, hemodynamic instability, or cardiac arrest. Simply put, it takes a concerted effort to NOT kill someone.
Vocalization, fist-clenching, thrashing, and other physical movements are adverse indications of the process. Snoring, gasping noises, and visible signs of increased work of breathing ARE NOT if the patient is unresponsive to painful stimulus. This is seen and is expected with relaxation of the muscles of the face and mouth with sedation. Typically, we use an oral airway and repositioning of the head and jaw to avoid this as they are all signs of airway obstruction from the relaxation. An explanation is given to family members if they are present. It is disingenuous to put this in an article without an explanation or in the context of the patient's level of consciousness.
(The above comments are in no way a reflection of my opinion on the death penalty.)
As a physician who deals with sedation on a daily basis like my ED colleagues and my anesthesia colleagues, it takes a concerted effort and knowledge to come up with the right drug or drugs and dosages to sedate a patient without impairing their breathing or cardiovascular system when the goal is to avoid cessation of breathing, hemodynamic instability, or cardiac arrest. Simply put, it takes a concerted effort to NOT kill someone.
Vocalization, fist-clenching, thrashing, and other physical movements are adverse indications of the process. Snoring, gasping noises, and visible signs of increased work of breathing ARE NOT if the patient is unresponsive to painful stimulus. This is seen and is expected with relaxation of the muscles of the face and mouth with sedation. Typically, we use an oral airway and repositioning of the head and jaw to avoid this as they are all signs of airway obstruction from the relaxation. An explanation is given to family members if they are present. It is disingenuous to put this in an article without an explanation or in the context of the patient's level of consciousness.
(The above comments are in no way a reflection of my opinion on the death penalty.)
9
Why don't they execute a few of these condemned individuals on March 14, the Christian's Good Friday? That would be a nice touch.
9
Disingenuous for anti-death penalty activists to make lethal injection drugs hard to get and then complain about executions because they aren't using the drugs that they made unavailable
10
I believe it is the drug manufacturers who are making the drug unavailable.
1
One question, the USA, this great democracy doesn't manage to banish the death penalty. Why ? I love USA when theirs powerful politicians show how deeply the roots are rotten. I love these society totally schizophrenic : on one hand, marriage is allowed for all, on other hand the states kill citizen. Transgender teenager's needs are more an more protect and sexual segregationist school are allowed. The best of humanity is growing in the worst sediments, do you have to see a hope ?
1
From wikipedia,
"In 1999, Lockett kidnapped, beat, and shot Stephanie Neiman, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate, friend of Lockett's other victims, and a witness to his crimes. The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman did not back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police. After she stated she would go to the police, Lockett decided to bury her alive.[10] Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her while she was still breathing. She died from two wounds from a shotgun fired by Lockett."
So i doubt many care he suffered during his execution.
"In 1999, Lockett kidnapped, beat, and shot Stephanie Neiman, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate, friend of Lockett's other victims, and a witness to his crimes. The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman did not back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police. After she stated she would go to the police, Lockett decided to bury her alive.[10] Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her while she was still breathing. She died from two wounds from a shotgun fired by Lockett."
So i doubt many care he suffered during his execution.
16
I think, it is barbaric and inhumane, to let these people live, and that their continued existence, shows a moral bankruptcy and failure and demeans the life of the murdered person; it is, in the end, depravity to let these people live
There is a moral obligation to right the scales of justice, and not let these people live
Because we are a humane society we do so, or attempt, without protracted pain; historically executions were as negative example, public, protracted, painful; and thus we have advanced?
=
I am mindful of wrongful deaths by executions as I am mindful of wrongful deaths by FAILURE to execute, homicidal recidivism, aka 'freed to kill again.'
=
For those who find execution unacceptable, what is the punishment for taking a life? room, board, unlimited medical care, at a US hotel
=
Prison is punishment by deprivation of liberty, has Charles Manson 'paid his debt to society?' or others, the 25,000 unknowns, each year, 100,000s each decade, THAT?! is our societal 'regard for life'
=
I've known six people who were murdered, some only from newspaper squibs; surely many more, whose one inch obit i missed that day
One victim was a sometimes sexual companion and partner, dead from a serial killer, the police interviewed me (I was a neighbor, they were canvassing), about some odd hair pins found at the killer's, could I ID it?
I actually had found such under my bed, but said 'that was a while ago, I can't hang a man on a bobby pin' and that was the end of that
There is a moral obligation to right the scales of justice, and not let these people live
Because we are a humane society we do so, or attempt, without protracted pain; historically executions were as negative example, public, protracted, painful; and thus we have advanced?
=
I am mindful of wrongful deaths by executions as I am mindful of wrongful deaths by FAILURE to execute, homicidal recidivism, aka 'freed to kill again.'
=
For those who find execution unacceptable, what is the punishment for taking a life? room, board, unlimited medical care, at a US hotel
=
Prison is punishment by deprivation of liberty, has Charles Manson 'paid his debt to society?' or others, the 25,000 unknowns, each year, 100,000s each decade, THAT?! is our societal 'regard for life'
=
I've known six people who were murdered, some only from newspaper squibs; surely many more, whose one inch obit i missed that day
One victim was a sometimes sexual companion and partner, dead from a serial killer, the police interviewed me (I was a neighbor, they were canvassing), about some odd hair pins found at the killer's, could I ID it?
I actually had found such under my bed, but said 'that was a while ago, I can't hang a man on a bobby pin' and that was the end of that
7
The blue- light special, of death. What did you expect, from this bunch???
7
Our country in many ways is barbaric. What could be more barbaric than what is described here? (actually Jihadists who behead innocent people) But we have put to death innocent people too. But what do you expect from a country where 4 of 10 people own guns; where young people at the University of Texas can carry concealed weapons to class. Speaking of cruel executions, remember "old sparky" the Florida electric chair that didn't always function properly? Then there were gas chambers, nice reminders of how Jews were executed in Nazi Germany. How can any "do no harm" doctor ever inject drugs that will eventually kill someone? When will this cruelty stop and America join civilized nations that do not, for moral reasons, allow people to be executed by the state?
6
I know it is unfair to make this comparison, but, reading this article, reminded me of Hannah Arendt's account of Eichmann, calling the trial a study in the banal. Her meaning was how a lower level bureaucrat, in the name of efficiency, murdered millions. Again, unfair to make the comparison, but, here is Arkansas you have bureaucrats faced with a problem---running out of lethal injection---decide to make the process more efficient. The death penalty alone is barbaric, but making it more efficient ---is there anyone in that banal Arkansas prison/justice bureaucracy ask themselves the question: what are we doing here?
9
You hit upon it perfectly. Something was bothering me about all of this as I was reading it: something ugly, ice cold, inhuman, and yet petty. You found it.
2
Hannah Arendt had a real, live Nazi paramour for decades, Martin Heidegger.
Her opinion on anything is less than worthless.
Her opinion on anything is less than worthless.
3
State sponsored murder is a form of terrorism
by the state. It's the epitome of hypocrisy to Murder someone for the crime of murder. If it served as a deterrent there w
would be no murder, obviously not the case..
It is simply blood lust and revenge.
And I write this as a person who watched her fiancé
shot to death in front of her, a random NYC street
mugging in 1982.
I do not believe in capital punishment , a barbaric
act. But a pregnant woman who wants to abort
a blastocyst for whatever reason is to be denied.
This is why " right to life" movements are utter
nonsense since those same people are happy
to see executions. You can't have it both ways.
by the state. It's the epitome of hypocrisy to Murder someone for the crime of murder. If it served as a deterrent there w
would be no murder, obviously not the case..
It is simply blood lust and revenge.
And I write this as a person who watched her fiancé
shot to death in front of her, a random NYC street
mugging in 1982.
I do not believe in capital punishment , a barbaric
act. But a pregnant woman who wants to abort
a blastocyst for whatever reason is to be denied.
This is why " right to life" movements are utter
nonsense since those same people are happy
to see executions. You can't have it both ways.
9
Equating an unborn baby with a wanton murderer might be the all time champion false equivalence. The innocent baby has wronged no one, the murderers awaiting execution have destroyed many lives beyond their immediate victims.
4
The Arkansans who approve this heinous act consider themselves morally superior to mainstream America because they attend church more often and adhere more closely to the old time religion. And they zealously promote putting Jesus back in school, so the kids can hold hands and say a mandatory daily prayer, ending with "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." In their brand of Christianity, the brutal, serial execution of eight men is small potatoes, measured against the rituals they hold dear. They used to lynch black men with equal fervor.
I presume former Governor Mike Huckabee is much too busy condemning gays as living sinful lives to pay any attention to these minor events.
I presume former Governor Mike Huckabee is much too busy condemning gays as living sinful lives to pay any attention to these minor events.
11
Those who lynched were democrats. The south is now republican. You know the party that freed the slaves and fought for women's' right to vote. Only to see democrats launch a killing spree across the south of both black slaves and the whites who sought their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Actually you cite Catholic prayer and I suppose rituals. The south is largely Protestant. Our rituals are prayer and that's about it.
I wonder what you would tell the victims and their families about your obvious insensitivity to the brutality and suffering they endure and have endured. How easy to criticize anonymously.
Actually you cite Catholic prayer and I suppose rituals. The south is largely Protestant. Our rituals are prayer and that's about it.
I wonder what you would tell the victims and their families about your obvious insensitivity to the brutality and suffering they endure and have endured. How easy to criticize anonymously.
1
A. I'm against capital punishment. I think it's bad for our nation in principle, and faulty in practice.
B. If I were in favor of it, I would not mind that someone gets fifteen minutes of struggle to die. Most people don't die that easily, and I don't expect that easy a death when my time comes.
B. If I were in favor of it, I would not mind that someone gets fifteen minutes of struggle to die. Most people don't die that easily, and I don't expect that easy a death when my time comes.
10
Those eight people have been on death row, for horrific crimes that didn't merit ONE WORD of mention in this piece, for a total of 177 years.
The depiction of this as some rush job is amusing. The most recent hideous crime committed by this gaggle of wanton destroyers of human lifer was in the late 1990s.
What about the right of victims to see just punishment delivered inside two decades?
The depiction of this as some rush job is amusing. The most recent hideous crime committed by this gaggle of wanton destroyers of human lifer was in the late 1990s.
What about the right of victims to see just punishment delivered inside two decades?
19
There is a body of science which practices a form of reversible execution each day. It's called anesthesiology. There have been texts written huge bodies of literature disseminated. Should not be this hard to figure it out folks.
10
Arkansas is part of the Bible Belt,they should ask themselves, what would Christ do?
27
I hope you are referring to the person who committed the crime in the first place?
1
@Ultra-
But, to do that, "they" must shed their sanctimonious hypocrisy; a heavy lift under any circumstances.
As for the condemned, their state-sanctioned murder does little except settle scores, perpetuating a murderous cycle. Yes, they did awful things, entitling the state to do awful things, too. A more productive approach might be to fight the circumstances that creates such monsters, trying to eliminate them in the hope of sparing others -- future victims and perpetrators alike.
But is it fair to state that that approach will admit "liberalism" into their closed world? A liberals' perspective is humanistic; anathema to conservatives. And it costs taxpayers money. And it involves the state in social re-engineering: fixing bad schools; rescuing children from poverty and broken homes; fighting drug addiction, especially meth and synthetic opiates. All liberal ideals.
A heavy lift indeed. Much easier to follow a conservative path. Discriminate. Ignore. Condemn. "Starve the beast". And kill offenders.
But, to do that, "they" must shed their sanctimonious hypocrisy; a heavy lift under any circumstances.
As for the condemned, their state-sanctioned murder does little except settle scores, perpetuating a murderous cycle. Yes, they did awful things, entitling the state to do awful things, too. A more productive approach might be to fight the circumstances that creates such monsters, trying to eliminate them in the hope of sparing others -- future victims and perpetrators alike.
But is it fair to state that that approach will admit "liberalism" into their closed world? A liberals' perspective is humanistic; anathema to conservatives. And it costs taxpayers money. And it involves the state in social re-engineering: fixing bad schools; rescuing children from poverty and broken homes; fighting drug addiction, especially meth and synthetic opiates. All liberal ideals.
A heavy lift indeed. Much easier to follow a conservative path. Discriminate. Ignore. Condemn. "Starve the beast". And kill offenders.
Jesus confronted those who judged others, stole from them, and generally made their lives miserable.
He also said pray for your government and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
On the cross He was flanked by two criminals. One scoffed at Jesus, the other confessed he was guilty but defended Jesus as innocent. The confessing criminal who recognized Jesus as God was given salvation. The other was not.
Jesus interceded on behalf of those illegally killing Him.
Jesus had the power to free Himself, destroy those who persecuted Him, and the religious leaders. He did not.
In a sin free world this would be a moot point. But it is not sin free. Capital murder is a serious offense under man's law and a sin under God's law. Judgment of every man,woman, and child is reserved for Jesus. But I don't think we can allow murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals to run free.
The law of the land in Arkansas allows capital punishment. Is death cruel punishment or unusual punishment? That's the standard in America. The voters in Arkansas think not. Is it a sin to support capital punishment? I likely would not vote for it but have not had the chance.
Do I follow Jesus' teaching to follow Caesar's (government's) law? In this country all but presidential elections are democratic. The majority rules.
He also said pray for your government and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
On the cross He was flanked by two criminals. One scoffed at Jesus, the other confessed he was guilty but defended Jesus as innocent. The confessing criminal who recognized Jesus as God was given salvation. The other was not.
Jesus interceded on behalf of those illegally killing Him.
Jesus had the power to free Himself, destroy those who persecuted Him, and the religious leaders. He did not.
In a sin free world this would be a moot point. But it is not sin free. Capital murder is a serious offense under man's law and a sin under God's law. Judgment of every man,woman, and child is reserved for Jesus. But I don't think we can allow murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals to run free.
The law of the land in Arkansas allows capital punishment. Is death cruel punishment or unusual punishment? That's the standard in America. The voters in Arkansas think not. Is it a sin to support capital punishment? I likely would not vote for it but have not had the chance.
Do I follow Jesus' teaching to follow Caesar's (government's) law? In this country all but presidential elections are democratic. The majority rules.
Good, let them experience a tiny bit of the pain they inflicted on the victims and their families. These people are on death row for a reason, why are we worried about making it painless for them?
10
Actually, it's more about making it painless for the witnesses and execution team.
1
Because we are not (supposed to be) a nation of torturers, first of all. Let's hear from all you "Christians" out there! Ugh.
4
I suggest that you have a discussion about your response with your minister. You are missing a piece. He or she can fill you in. Maybe.
3
The United States is a violent society. I don't think there is anybody on the death row in this country that was not given multiple chances for prior offences and then went on to kill somebody in cold blood without any remorse or compassion. I actually think the Death penalty is less cruel than the alternative, life in prison without parole.
3
No person should be put to death at the hands of another person ( especially at the hands of the state ) regardless of their crime.
It's barbaric, and yet we call ourselves civilized.
It's barbaric, and yet we call ourselves civilized.
6
Reading the news in my country has become like reading horror stories. I never liked fictional horror stories and certainly never expected to one day my own country to codify them into reality. It's heartbreaking.
1
It appears to me, from my news sources, that heroin laced with Fentynal is a pretty efficient drug for the intended purpose discussed in this article.
3
The death penalty has no place in a civilized society.
8
Suggest a better remedy. Simply criticizing a practice is not enough.
In Arkansas the jury determines punishment, not the judge. So a proposal that would garner support is a good idea. No one has done so yet.
In Arkansas the jury determines punishment, not the judge. So a proposal that would garner support is a good idea. No one has done so yet.
Anyone who has had a colonoscopy understands what the problem with midazolam (aka "Versed", the most common brand name) as the tranquilizer in the "three drug" extermination cocktail is: it is a deep sedative, not an surgical anesthetic.
When under the influence of this drug, you can hear commands and watch the physician's instrument as he shows you the results, but you are not fully conscious and don't remember the procedure when the drug wears off in a few minutes. You don't feel sensation or pain, but the modern colonoscopy instruments are less painful than previous procedures due to their modern design and miniaturization.
Midazolam, however, does not seem to be as good a sedative to mask the effects of the potassium and other poisons later injected to paralyze the doomed prisoner's heart. Thus they are prone to wake up and begin writhing and screaming as the poisons paralyze their bodies.
When under the influence of this drug, you can hear commands and watch the physician's instrument as he shows you the results, but you are not fully conscious and don't remember the procedure when the drug wears off in a few minutes. You don't feel sensation or pain, but the modern colonoscopy instruments are less painful than previous procedures due to their modern design and miniaturization.
Midazolam, however, does not seem to be as good a sedative to mask the effects of the potassium and other poisons later injected to paralyze the doomed prisoner's heart. Thus they are prone to wake up and begin writhing and screaming as the poisons paralyze their bodies.
3
None of that was true in any colonoscopy I have experienced. It was true of a sigmoidoscopy I underwent.
Though not nearly as "cruel and unusual" as the crimes these people committed, nor as cruel as the pain the victims' families, loved ones and friends continue to experience every day. This is not revenge, but justice (or whatever semantic game you want to play) - and it cannot come soon enough.
7
How on earth does any doctor reconcile the oath he or she takes with active participation in these barbarous state executions?
6
Please, please stop trying to use sedatives or general anesthetics to kill people. These drugs were designed to sedate or induce come while NOT killing people. If you want to use a drug to kill people, use a poison, like cyanide!
Foreign manufacturers stop selling to the US anesthesia community drugs that have been used for lethal injection here. This is why I can use thiopental to induce general anesthesia in Ghana but not in the United States. If propofol is ever used for lethal injection in the US, this will precipitate a crisis in anesthesthesiology, for 85% of our supply is manufactured in Germany, which would immediately stop supplying to us. Propofol is currently used to start the vast majority of general anesthetics in the United States.
Alternatively, perhaps the states that want to use lethal injection could find a way to force the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture their favorite potions in the United States.
Using sedatives and general anesthetics to kill people hurts all of us.
Foreign manufacturers stop selling to the US anesthesia community drugs that have been used for lethal injection here. This is why I can use thiopental to induce general anesthesia in Ghana but not in the United States. If propofol is ever used for lethal injection in the US, this will precipitate a crisis in anesthesthesiology, for 85% of our supply is manufactured in Germany, which would immediately stop supplying to us. Propofol is currently used to start the vast majority of general anesthetics in the United States.
Alternatively, perhaps the states that want to use lethal injection could find a way to force the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture their favorite potions in the United States.
Using sedatives and general anesthetics to kill people hurts all of us.
6
Wow. Eight executions over eleven days In Arkansas and the argument is over whether midazolam should be used & is REALLY that difficult to get? I consider myself agnostic about the death penalty but George Carlin was right. America: a great country but a weird culture.
1
Mass execution before expiration date of killer-drug?
Hey, why not declare another war before ammunition's expiration date?
Hey, why not declare another war before ammunition's expiration date?
5
I know I would want vengeance if someone killed my loved ones and would struggle with the concept of forgiveness which is precisely why I should be excluded from any decision on sentencing except release into the community. The death penalty is barbaric and America's problem with it is that citizens are encouraged to see it as their rightful retribution without any thought as to what it does to their own humanity.
8
Really? You are worried about an expiration date on a drug that you are going to use to kill people anyway?
5
There should be no execution, of course.
But neither should there be suffering and murder.
Yet I feel more for innocent animals than I do for convicted humans.
But neither should there be suffering and murder.
Yet I feel more for innocent animals than I do for convicted humans.
3
Great. Now we're killing people because the means to do it may get past it's "use by" date.
Anyone who has been inside the legal system for any amount of time knows that the system generates one thing with great regularity - mistakes.
It is filled with a lot of people with good intentions - we all know about that - but also with people who are not good at their jobs, who are lazy or incompetent, who are political with an eye on their next job and on headlines, who are biased and prejudiced, who are mean and are bullies with power for the first time in their lives on juries or sought their jobs for the power - judges, who are new and looking to make numbers and who are old and marking time - with friendships and grudges for and against the players in any particular case.
It's just like anywhere you have ever worked - with your fellow employees and the supervisors and bosses having say over the fortunes, freedom of the people who they sit in judgment over. Scary thought, huh?
And then we give them the power over someone's life? The ability to kill them legally? Even after all the "safeguards" they say they build into the system, it's not unusual to hear of another Death Row inmate being freed when evidence shows up or someone finally tells the truth.
Imagine the horror of their lives. Then imagine the horror of the conviction and execution of those who technology or conscience didn't catch up to in time. Who we couldn't say "Oop's" to and open the cell door.
Anyone who has been inside the legal system for any amount of time knows that the system generates one thing with great regularity - mistakes.
It is filled with a lot of people with good intentions - we all know about that - but also with people who are not good at their jobs, who are lazy or incompetent, who are political with an eye on their next job and on headlines, who are biased and prejudiced, who are mean and are bullies with power for the first time in their lives on juries or sought their jobs for the power - judges, who are new and looking to make numbers and who are old and marking time - with friendships and grudges for and against the players in any particular case.
It's just like anywhere you have ever worked - with your fellow employees and the supervisors and bosses having say over the fortunes, freedom of the people who they sit in judgment over. Scary thought, huh?
And then we give them the power over someone's life? The ability to kill them legally? Even after all the "safeguards" they say they build into the system, it's not unusual to hear of another Death Row inmate being freed when evidence shows up or someone finally tells the truth.
Imagine the horror of their lives. Then imagine the horror of the conviction and execution of those who technology or conscience didn't catch up to in time. Who we couldn't say "Oop's" to and open the cell door.
6
There are two sides to the syringes: One is the condemned prisoner. The other is the prison staff member(s) who will strap him down, find a vein, swab the skin with disinfectant, insert the needle and tape it in place, administer the lethal drugs, stand there and observe a human being die as the immediate and direct result of his (their) deliberate actions. A prison staff member may be able to participate in one, two, maybe even three executions over the course of a career in "corrections." But to participate in eight executions of human beings in the course of a week?? That's cruel and inhuman employment conditions. This madness must stop.
8
But for the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and Iraq, America could also lead the world in executions as it does in mass incarceration imprisonment. No just God would or should bless America when the death penalty, like prison, is focused on the poor particularly those who are black African and brown Latino. Arkansas gave us the moral degenerate happy executioners Orval Faubus , Winthrop Rockefeller, Bill Clinton, Mike Huckabee and Asa Hutchinson.
4
Of these eight criminals I think one, maybe two, is black. In Arkansas the jury determines punishment, not the judge. That means all of the jurors are convinced the offender deserves the punishment. The governor only gets involved when all appeals have failed, if any. If no appeal the governor sets the date.
You may want to investigate Arkansas prisons while Faubus was governor and what Rockefeller did when he came in. Faubus a Democrat and Rockefeller a republican.
Democrats in the south were defenders of slavery, beating and raping of slaves. They formed the KKK and were behind lynchings, burning of homes and churches, bombings, and murder of civil rights activists black and white.
You may want to investigate Arkansas prisons while Faubus was governor and what Rockefeller did when he came in. Faubus a Democrat and Rockefeller a republican.
Democrats in the south were defenders of slavery, beating and raping of slaves. They formed the KKK and were behind lynchings, burning of homes and churches, bombings, and murder of civil rights activists black and white.
What a shame there isn't a prominent, well-known, respected Arkansan — a beloved former governor, let's say, or perhaps even a popular two-term President of the United States — who is willing to take a public stand against this unbelievably barbarous miscarriage of justice.
I'm a liberal Democrat, and I thought I was finished compiling my list of ways Bill Clinton has let us down, but I guess as long as there's breath in the old dog he'll find new ones.
I'm a liberal Democrat, and I thought I was finished compiling my list of ways Bill Clinton has let us down, but I guess as long as there's breath in the old dog he'll find new ones.
3
Bill and Hillary Clinton weren't even real Democrats. The news Hillary is about to come out of hiding and resume a public role is bad news. The Clinton's and their "3rd way" corporate ideology choked off the Democratic Party in this country for a quarter of a century. Many Democrats and progressives desperately want the Clintons to go away and let the Democrats move their party into the future without any more neo-liberal Clinton interference. Greedy, power-obsessed people, it's doubtful we'll ever be rid of Bill & Hillary. They will never "retire" and leave us alone.
3
Your example fails on the idea of respected. It's true there are some who still respect Bill Clinton down here. But even they are silenced when asked about his morality. Without that there is no respect unless there is a very low standard.
Quick, before they find exculpatory evidence!
32
These people were lawfully convicted. Today's story isn't even about what happened in court. The coastal media need you scared and then angry about how the back-up drugs aren't good substitutes.
The REAL medicine or chemical to send these criminals off in a painless dream state is sodium thiopental, but liberal lawyers have made careers out of suing the drug out of existence. You'll have to search out this info because it is definitely politically incorrect.
This is another indicator of the need for tort reform, and thus another reason that President Trump won election.
The REAL medicine or chemical to send these criminals off in a painless dream state is sodium thiopental, but liberal lawyers have made careers out of suing the drug out of existence. You'll have to search out this info because it is definitely politically incorrect.
This is another indicator of the need for tort reform, and thus another reason that President Trump won election.
2
Really? Many of these murderers have been on death row for years. I don't know of a single one who's family is contesting the legal outcome. How do we define justice?
I prefer this justice to the justice Kate Steinly got. Murdered by an illegal immigrant deported for crimes five times. Government protection of criminals is absurd.
We can debate the virtue of the death penalty but to allow violent criminals to run wild proves anyone that supports it has zero credibility to argue the enforcement the law.
I prefer this justice to the justice Kate Steinly got. Murdered by an illegal immigrant deported for crimes five times. Government protection of criminals is absurd.
We can debate the virtue of the death penalty but to allow violent criminals to run wild proves anyone that supports it has zero credibility to argue the enforcement the law.
1
The lust for revenge is yet another proof of the moral shortcomings this country...
45
The idea that medical science cannot find a humane pharmaceutical for ending life is preposterous. Also, life in prison is barbaric also; so' the argument about execution needs to be broader and less full of "gothca" talking points. The man that shot at FDR, missed and killed the mayor of Chicago went through the entire system and was terminated within a few months of the incident. No on thinks that he did not receive affair trial. What has changed? Why? Start looking at the entire process, time for an overhaul.
6
There are drugs which "humanely" kill, as you put it, but pharmacies and drug manufacturers do not wish to be associated with executions. Why we are stuck on the fad of putting a murderer down like a sick and dying cat I do not understand. Personally, I would rather be shot by a group of marksman--in the head and heart--using large-caliber rifles. Ammunition companies are not going to be queasy about their ammo being used in an execution.
7
Well, for one thing, death-sentenced individuals are entitled to legal representation at more stages of their appeals and federal proceedings. Before you start blaming the lawyers for the slowness with which death penalty cases wind their way through the courts, though, that change alone means that legal errors are discovered more often than they would have been absent the condemned inmates having a lawyer. Also, in spite of the fact that the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act passed in the 90s was supposed to streamline death penalty litigation in the federal courts, it has actually had the opposite effect. Thanks, Congress. Furthermore, the Supreme Court's holding in the Pinholster case a few years ago resulted in sending some cases that had reached the federal courts back to the state court for a whole new round of litigation. In Pinholster, the Court held that federal habeas corpus courts could not consider ANY new evidence discovered since the state courts considered the case IF the state courts had addressed the issue to which the new evidence related. Thank you Supreme Court. And these changes, which of course are not exhaustive of changes in the law since FDR's time, don't even touch on the prolonged litigation over the methods and drugs used in lethal injection. The entire area of capital punishment law desperately needs to be completely overhauled or abandoned altogether.
How many of these eight inmates are black? How many are white? Just wondering.....
16
4 black, 4 white. Arkansas has gotten so diverse! This is a travesty. There has been a letter-writing campaign by Arkansans, but Hutchinson is a brute.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/feb/27/arkansas-governor-sets-ex...
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/feb/27/arkansas-governor-sets-ex...
1
Four are black and four are white.
It's four and four, as a matter of fact.
How insanely and madly ironic that the states which desire, it seems, more than any other thing, to end the lives of a few chosen inmates, are all but being forced to buy "execution drugs" on the street, from internet suppliers from small firms-some are south of the border, and most have their mail order service to the US constantly interrupted by the organs of the federal government,(DEA), which may hold the drugs in transit , in a special court where, if the purchaser wants them, it must pay a bond, in cash, immensely large in relation to the value of the substances . The state departments of "correction",(more irony), are placed in the position of small time crooks and college kids or dealers trying to evade federal laws regulating drug sale and distribution. I am waiting to hear of one, or several Southern-Western states defending their mail order purchase of such controlled substances, "for the purpose of executing humans"who were convicted of crimes within their states. I'm sure they see nothing funny about it, but they might do better simply purchasing their "stuff" off the "dark net" or, even better, just executing victims sentenced using big injections of the opioid Fentinyl- which, even in small doses can easily stop their breathing.If or when mistakes are made, simply giving O2 in gas until the victim awakes will solve-or reverse- the problem
2
I think most people who support the death penalty would be satisfied If instead of death, the most heinous murderers were subjected to 7 day a week hard labor, fed only a bland diet, no tv, no computers, just hard labor and boredom.
6
And how do you define "heinous"? The people on death row I work with are there for a variety of reasons, but one common variable is poverty, youth and drugs/alcohol. Most of the inmates I know of acted impulsively (no planning, no premeditation) and in desperation. Many suffer fetal alcohol syndrome and low IQ. I am not saying people who kill should not be punished, but they should also be educated and rehabilitated. By the way, on Texas death row, inmates already have a bland diet with no TV or computers. They would love to work, but the TDCJ will not allow this.
3
so are you meaning that the justice is not here to protect the citizen, but to fill their desire of revenge ? Strange idea of the justice.
4
I have never understood how I can be forced to pay tax dollars that support the death penalty, which I view as morally repugnant and violates my religious beliefs, but somehow the anti-choice lobby convinced Congress that their taxes should not support abortion. The death penalty is an abomination and barbaric. And, as shown by Innocence Project victories, innocent people are wrongly convicted and sentenced to death.
74
Well stated! I would love to be able to "opt out" of funding death, for just the same reason the anti-abortion people do...
Use a firing squad. Surely this demented state is capable of this cost saving, efficient means. Come on AK, you can do it...!
8
AK stands for Alaska, AR is the abbreviation for Arkansas.
10
Indeed. A "humane execution" is an oxymoron. Lethal injection is designed to give the executioners a false sense that what they are doing is simply an unusual medical procedure. If a state insists on carrying out executions, then they should face the reality of what they are doing without attempting to put a facade of humaneness on top.
11
Why waste good ammo? A strong man with a sledge hammer could dispatch a condemned man with one swing, and the cost would be minimal.
The heinous violence committed by the death row condemned, mirrors the heinous violence about to be committed by the state of Arkansas. This circular flow of raw carnage and brutality, has been endemic to America from the revolutionary frontier, through the "Blood Meridian" of Cormac McCarthy, to its virtual manifestation in today's most popular video games. It is the American curse
11
Heinous violence is hardly unique to America.
I'm not concerned that these dregs of humanity suffer. Their victims suffered. Did these criminals even think of the suffering of their victims? I have no sympathy for these criminals. They're getting what they deserve.
9
Well, except for that pesky Constitution and all.
23
And how many death row inmates have been exonerated by new evidence etc.?
3
George Washington did not hesitate to execute spies and deserters and he presided over the Constitutional Convention.
1
No reason to continue arguing against the death penalty. Multiple US Supreme Court decisions have provided levels of safeguards against wrongful conviction as well as against "cruel and unusual" punishment; i.e. execution. Appeals through state and federal appellate courts take at least a decade or more. DNA testing is available to exonerate, but only if there is a modicum of material to test. Many cases are proven to have convicted the wrong person due to bias, rush to judgement and political gain of prosecutors figured into the arrest & evidential proof of guilt before sentencing. The SCOTUS already decided states have a right to execute anyone convicted of a crime so heinous that a jury sentenced them to death, and all appeals are exhausted. Regardless, there is no reason not to use anesthetic drugs currently used for surgical (or even colonoscopy) procedures.
2
Tell this to Cameron Todd Willingham. Oh, you can't. He's dead.
2
How is this a NYT pick? It's self contradictory, rambling, and almost incoherent.
4
No one should die because of a mistake their court-appointed (in nearly all cases) lawyers made. If you think they system is fair, you haven't studied it enough.
1
And this is a state that claims to be pro-life, so much so that they have to delete the ability of most women to obtain ANY kind of reproductive care. As has been pointed out many times, you can't claim to be pro-life and not provide food, medical, care, education, and mercy to the already born of any age. This is barbaric.
54
As an Arkansan, I agree, the hypocrisy is stunning. The Republican Standard Issue Hypocrisy.
3
I am retired law enforcement (BOP). Every year, at least, we had refresher training about the proper use of force. To summarize, force is only used in order to contain the inmate and eliminate the threat. Once the inmate is in restraints and under control, the use of force stops. No extra kicks or punches because he ticked you off. Even if he just spat in your face, threw feces at you ... or even if he just injured a fellow staff member. We were expected to put the anger aside and act like professionals.
I cannot think of anything that is a clearer example of "excessive use of force" than taking an inmate from a secure cell in restraints, strapping him to a gurney, and killing him.
Do not assume this means I am "soft " on criminals, or that I feel more sorry for them than for their victims. If any of them had been killed while resisting arrest, or while attacking someone in prison, I wouldn't shed a tear. This is about who WE are, not who they are.
We should contain and control inmates, not murder them.
I cannot think of anything that is a clearer example of "excessive use of force" than taking an inmate from a secure cell in restraints, strapping him to a gurney, and killing him.
Do not assume this means I am "soft " on criminals, or that I feel more sorry for them than for their victims. If any of them had been killed while resisting arrest, or while attacking someone in prison, I wouldn't shed a tear. This is about who WE are, not who they are.
We should contain and control inmates, not murder them.
195
AG New York . . . Yours is a clear voice. Better said, impossible. Thank you.
2
execution is not murder. Murder is the unlawful killing of a person. Regardless of your personal feelings on capital punishment it is lawful and referring to it as murder is a sensationalist tactic.
These ostensible "pro lifers" are the ultimate hypocrites - their "reverence for life" doesn't temper their zeal to execute people. it is long past time to end the death penalty in this nation. We stand in ghastly company with nations with the worst human rights records on earth, yet here is Arkansas, racing to execute 8 people with a drug never intended for anything but humane and palliative measures. There is no doubt that these inmates are being subjected to unconstitutional executions, well within the range of cruel and unusual punishment. It makes far more sense to let these people languish in obscurity in prison for the remainder of their lives than to descend to the level of barbarians by torturing them in their final hours. 3/20, 8:28 AM
37
If this isn't "cruel and unusual", what is?
5
My god these people are ignorant. It does stand to reason (something not usually found in court, however) the executions will be postponed until better arrangements are made.
If not, Arkansas will only diminish what tiny appearance of common sense (I hope) they have.
If not, Arkansas will only diminish what tiny appearance of common sense (I hope) they have.
5
All over this newspaper everyday there are op-eds and then comments from readers questioning how someone like Donald Trump could ever get elected. Nothing explains it more than the deep popularity of the death penalty. The ultimate tough guy punishment, the sure way we can all show that we are not weak.
Its the issue that exposes the true immorality present in our culture. Its popularity explains why war is so popular, why police violence is legitimized and even explains why criminals easily resort to gun violence. Violence is a god and redemptive violence is the true god of America, forget Jesus dying on the cross not so much in expiation of our sins but because of and exposing our sinful nature.That guy was weak so we remake him into a Rambo loving no meals on wheels for the undeserving god. Cruelty is exalted in our country and compassion is derided.
Would it really hurt anything to let these 8 guys live in prison for the rest of their lives? I am sure that in other states there are people far worse serving that sentence. No matter how they kill them its wrong and just lessens the rest of us.
Its the issue that exposes the true immorality present in our culture. Its popularity explains why war is so popular, why police violence is legitimized and even explains why criminals easily resort to gun violence. Violence is a god and redemptive violence is the true god of America, forget Jesus dying on the cross not so much in expiation of our sins but because of and exposing our sinful nature.That guy was weak so we remake him into a Rambo loving no meals on wheels for the undeserving god. Cruelty is exalted in our country and compassion is derided.
Would it really hurt anything to let these 8 guys live in prison for the rest of their lives? I am sure that in other states there are people far worse serving that sentence. No matter how they kill them its wrong and just lessens the rest of us.
23
I couldn't agree more but I admit I'm theorising, not speaking from experience as I'm British and not only have we not had the death penalty since 1965 (except for treason and that was abolished in 1998) but we also don't have a gun owning culture. Vengeance diminishes the humanity of those calling for it.
4
" I am sure that in other states there are people far worse serving that sentence."
No I don't believe there are people far worse than premeditated, sadistic killers
No I don't believe there are people far worse than premeditated, sadistic killers
The GOP has been spouting this "let's leave it to the states" nonsense for decades. Let the local yokels decide because they possess "wisdom."
9
Perhaps, 'what makes a crook is the occasion' (translatable to 'what makes a killer...') is applicable here. That we humans are ready to kill comes as no surprise, we have been doing so, to our 'hearts content', for ever; and now, under state government's supervision, torture has been added, to complete the task. The circus' clowns are ready for the show.
4
How cruel and unusual. In fact, quite barbaric. Can you please stop this madness and rejoin the civilised world asap. We need a beacon of hope and humanity.
9
Try Canada.
1
With no guarantees of midazolam's efficiency, shouldn't the Supreme Court step in? Better they should turn to decapitation or firing squad than "gamble" on a successful execution.
Death is about as final as you can make punishment. It should be done properly if it must be done at all.
Death is about as final as you can make punishment. It should be done properly if it must be done at all.
4
That would have been a good idea had the Republicans not blocked Obama's candidates for the Supreme Court. Trump and co intend to appoint right wing advocates of the death penalty and, perversely, the right to life. Sadly, as Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life I do not see any death sentence being reversed in my lifetime.
A .45 to the back of the head is instantaneous, painless, and certain. It is not cruel and sadly, not unusual. It also does not require the services of any doctors or other skilled medical personnel.
It is a bit messy. The execution site would have to be washed down afterwards. But it's better than what misguided humaneness has led us to.
And it's legal.
It is a bit messy. The execution site would have to be washed down afterwards. But it's better than what misguided humaneness has led us to.
And it's legal.
5
No it's not humane to those you would have carry out the execution. Even the British professional hangman Albert Pierrepont was sickened by the sheer number of executions he had to perform on war criminals after WWII. Anyone who states they could happily carry out the death sentence shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any criminal in prison.
1
The opinion writers fail to note the crimes of the men sentenced to death. Nor do they mention the suffering of their victims and their families. Those losses are part of the equation of guilt and execution. I have no sympathy for the men who have been found guilty, some multiple times as their appeals run out. Maybe those criminals, murders and rapists should have thought before they committed the crimes. They're not facing death because of their kindness and humanity. They are facing death because of their own cruelty and their killing sprees. The state of Arkansas has nothing to apologize for.
8
Of course your argument is based on a false premise. It depends on the presumption that police never lie or fabricate evidence, that "expert" witnesses are never wrong, that prosecutors never overreach through zealousness or ambition, that there is never public or political pressure to convict "someone" rather than the right one, that race is never an issue, and that judges and juries are infallible.
We know that none of this is true, and we also know that we can cite off a long list of those sentenced to death purely for political expediency or because an example was needed to keep "them" in their place. Or of individuals who's guilt was questionable at best, or who were ultimately proven innocent.
The alleged crime (if it actually happened) is irrelevant. Each and every time the state chooses to use its' authority to kill an individual for the its' own purposes (whatever they might be) it is making a choice not unlike that of the (presumably guilty) subject of the death warrant. And every time it makes that choice, it has a heck of a lot to apologize for.
We know that none of this is true, and we also know that we can cite off a long list of those sentenced to death purely for political expediency or because an example was needed to keep "them" in their place. Or of individuals who's guilt was questionable at best, or who were ultimately proven innocent.
The alleged crime (if it actually happened) is irrelevant. Each and every time the state chooses to use its' authority to kill an individual for the its' own purposes (whatever they might be) it is making a choice not unlike that of the (presumably guilty) subject of the death warrant. And every time it makes that choice, it has a heck of a lot to apologize for.
14
The police are not always good. Sometimes they do cover-up and hide evidence. They may not tell the truth. And sometimes to there is a rush to judgement because the public or a prosecutor is seeking revenge. There are many, many reasons not to execute. Except when in too many cases, the criminals are caught with blood on their hands. How many times are children found beaten or starved to death? How often are wives and girl friends killed in jealous rage? How many store keepers are shot to death for a $20 robbery? How many police are killed or wounded while on the job? And how many drug deals go south and wind up with multiple deaths from the actions of gangs and dealers? I'm not for the death penalty. I am for justice. Life without possibility of parole is a much better answer. But then, of course, we know of cases where after 25 to 30 years of incarceration we suddenly find new DNA evidence that exonerates the prisoner. There is no perfect answer. Except for one; Criminals should think twice and so should others who would put themselves in the cross hairs of the justice system. Too, we must teach our children the difference between right and wrong. moral and immoral. Every night here in Florida there is a report of several deaths by shooting. I agree. The death penalty does not end the slaughter. Nor does life in prison. We need a better way to end crime and punish or rehabilitate criminals.
1
Everyday, thousands of veterinarians across America and Canada painlessly and gently euthanize animals for all kinds of reason, to give relief from suffering, to end a dangerous animal, or simply, sadly, because there isn't enough room for them.
Yet in our rush to kill our fellow men and women, somehow, the inept denizens of the blood-thirsty states (most of them Southern Red states) can't seem to manage to do so without violating the 8th Amendment's ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Naturally, the bloodthirsty have no problem with the condemned suffering from a botched execution because they "deserve it". Maybe they do, but the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says that's not for the State to determine that. An execution cannot be cruel as these are.
Why so many clearly intelligent and educated Justices of the SCOTUS cannot grasp this simple, clear and obvious fact, especially the hypocritical "originalists" is depressing, because it's no mystery. Politics and power come before Law.
What's really depressing is that Gov. Asa Hutchinson is actually a very smart, thoughtful, almost brilliant man, who, despite standing for everything I detest, I've always respected, much more so than his brother, Tim, a former Senator. He's head and shoulders above one of his most famous predecessors, that bloviating buffoon Mike Huckabee.
I guess Arkansas has really devolved back into the Jim Crow sentiments it was once infamous for.
Yet in our rush to kill our fellow men and women, somehow, the inept denizens of the blood-thirsty states (most of them Southern Red states) can't seem to manage to do so without violating the 8th Amendment's ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Naturally, the bloodthirsty have no problem with the condemned suffering from a botched execution because they "deserve it". Maybe they do, but the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says that's not for the State to determine that. An execution cannot be cruel as these are.
Why so many clearly intelligent and educated Justices of the SCOTUS cannot grasp this simple, clear and obvious fact, especially the hypocritical "originalists" is depressing, because it's no mystery. Politics and power come before Law.
What's really depressing is that Gov. Asa Hutchinson is actually a very smart, thoughtful, almost brilliant man, who, despite standing for everything I detest, I've always respected, much more so than his brother, Tim, a former Senator. He's head and shoulders above one of his most famous predecessors, that bloviating buffoon Mike Huckabee.
I guess Arkansas has really devolved back into the Jim Crow sentiments it was once infamous for.
9
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one here that doesn't care if these excuses for human beings suffer a little for what they've done.
4
Why don't they use heroin? They can buy it cheaply on the street and bypass those pesky pharmaceutical companies. And we all know how well it works.
2
The death penalty should be abolished. There are some convicted persons that deserve the death penalty. But, the absence of a totally error free process leading to the investigation, arrest, indictment, and trial of some persons found guilty, sentenced to death and executed; there is no recourse if executed in error.
4
Name one person that has 100% been wrongly executed? Hello? Crickets.....
2
I have always wondered how Terry Mc Auliffe, the "Oklahoma City bomber"(executed in the late 90's) would have reacted and, felt at learning of the airliner crashes into the World Trade Center. The sight of so much US real estate,of so many innocent US citizens and numerous soldiers and plane passengers, all the way down to Washington, DC, murdered by another, more officious group of religious fanatics-one which spat literally and figuratively upon his Christianity- and who died in the knowledge that they would awaken into Allah's heaven, served by armies of ever virginal houris who had been the wives and daughters of their enemies-(Wow! the erotic imagination of fanatics knows no bounds!)-I suspect that McVeigh himself might have reconsidered his own religious fanaticism.
If only McVeigh were alive and able to see just how small and petulant he and his action appeared in the light of the mass murders of Islamic zealots who probably didn't even know who McVeigh was.
This is one of the best reasons for ending the death penalty-that events like 9/11/01 may cause even the most hardened and crazed offenders to reexamine their own crimes and offenses, eventually concluding they made horrible and absurd mistakes in the light of new events, that make their own actions seem minor, small time efforts at personal vengeance, and terribly ill conceived.
No room for instruction or remorse, was left for those guilty of such crimes against their own countrymen.
If only McVeigh were alive and able to see just how small and petulant he and his action appeared in the light of the mass murders of Islamic zealots who probably didn't even know who McVeigh was.
This is one of the best reasons for ending the death penalty-that events like 9/11/01 may cause even the most hardened and crazed offenders to reexamine their own crimes and offenses, eventually concluding they made horrible and absurd mistakes in the light of new events, that make their own actions seem minor, small time efforts at personal vengeance, and terribly ill conceived.
No room for instruction or remorse, was left for those guilty of such crimes against their own countrymen.
Cameron Todd Willingham. TEXAS. Rick Perry. An arson " murder" that wasn't. Look it up.
2
These are animals that deserve to die and if they experience just a small portion of the pain their victims experienced so be it. Liberals are always pushing the wrong causes.
5
Golly, anti execution advocates advocating anti execution
Stop the presses!
Prithee, authors, let us reinstate M. Guillot's humane device, for so it was presented, and we have very few 'misfires' in that mechanism
i await your endorsement
=
to further clarify my views, since we have 25,000 homicides/ year, we should have 25,000 executions per year, or as close as we can get
Stop the presses!
Prithee, authors, let us reinstate M. Guillot's humane device, for so it was presented, and we have very few 'misfires' in that mechanism
i await your endorsement
=
to further clarify my views, since we have 25,000 homicides/ year, we should have 25,000 executions per year, or as close as we can get
4
@ John Smith and Crossing Overhead:
According to Amnesty International, "since 1973, 151 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row."
This fact alone indicates that capital punishment is morally indefensible.
Capital punishment degrades the punisher and the would-be punisher as much as exacting the revenge you savor.
According to Amnesty International, "since 1973, 151 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row."
This fact alone indicates that capital punishment is morally indefensible.
Capital punishment degrades the punisher and the would-be punisher as much as exacting the revenge you savor.
14
This is horrifying. And so hypocritical. Shame on you Arkansas.
5
The death penalty is despicable and barbaric.
6
So is raping and murdering a pregnant woman. Yet you support the convicts who had to suffer for a few minutes
7
It's simple to understand - part of the united states, dominated by GOP politicians, aren't actually civilized. It's justo one of the reasons I avoid places like Florida and Arkansas; uncivilized people living in Medieval morality. Thanks, but I'll stick to civilization up north.
10
I have watched four of my dogs be put down. It appears to be a gentle and humane procedure. It requires one injection and happens almost instantaneously. Obviously, the fact that they don't understand what is going on helps immensely. However, it doesn't explain the absence of the horrific events described in this opinion piece. Can someone with more knowledge than me, please explain to me why a human execution, if we must continue to do them, can't be like how we treat our animals.
10
Arkansas is doing the right thing by speeding up the execution dates of these heinous murderers because not to do so will affect the safety of their impending deaths. The constitution requires that people be executed in a medically safe manner. Even these killers deserve fresh unexpired drugs to terminate them. That is their constitutional right and those rights must be protected. This kills two birds with one stone as it were. Arkansas dispatches them ahead of schedule and the murderers can be assured they will experience safe medically clean executions. It's a win win. Kudos to Arkansas.
9
Please cite the part of the Constitution that requires that "people be executed in a medically safe manner." Are you writing about the U.S. Constitution or the Arkansas State Constitution? There is a long debate about whether or not the death penalty itself is constitutional so I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that addresses how people should be killed.
This is surely unconstitutional. Due process should be inviolable, and not subject to the caveats of available resources.
2
These people were tried and convicted by a jury of their peers and had their opportunity to appeal. What's the due process issue? A random citizen wth zero constitutional knowledge subjectively feels like there was a due process violation?
6
Regardless of one's opinion of the issue, the state should reasonably be expected to provide a well managed procedure free of slapdash, haphazard improvising.
If you had advil that was expiring soon wouldn't you use it first before opening a new bottle. Sorry, no sympathy from me. Why weren't these animals, upon a jury's declaration of guilty, executed the next day?
4
Maybe because, upon conviction, they have the right to appeal their sentence? Do you have any knowledge of our justice system, sir?
5
In the good old days yore, this was true. Liberals have invented due process that extends beyond a fair trial. I say one appeal and execution.
2
You can find anecdotal evidence to support the side you're most comfortable with, but if you want to be honest with yourself, there is objective evidence. Do states that ban capital punishment see an increase in crimes that formerly could lead to a death sentence? No. Do states that commence capital punishment see a decrease in crimes that can now lead to a death sentence? No.
Capital punishment is vengeance masquerading as justice.
Capital punishment is vengeance masquerading as justice.
44
It is punishment. Not rehabilitation or a deterrent. Punishment.
3
If so, it is a "punishment" that blacks are likelier to receive than whites--for identical crimes. It is a "punishment" that is likelier when the victim is white than black. And...it is a "punishment" known to have been meted out to those who were later found to be innocent.
5
Drugs like midazolam do not suddenly expire and lose all their effectiveness. Over time it will lose its potency slowly so the solution is to use a higher dose of the drug after its expiration date in order to obtain the desired results.
1
The states, predominantly Southern and Midwestern, with their conservative justice always amazes me. First the bible, "thou shalt not kill", then the anti-abortion issue, can't take a life. Yet no difficulty with executing someone. What hypocrisy.
12
Except abortion involves murdering an innocent child. The death penalty operates only after a jury decided that the convicts murdered another human being. Do you not see the difference?
2
Do you really see no difference between killing an innocent (and perhaps viable) fetus and executing a duly convicted murderer?
1
No I don't see the difference. The Bible and the teachings of my church (Catholic) are very clear. Thous shalt not kill, period. That includes capital punishment.
"In 1999, Lockett kidnapped, beat, and shot Stephanie Neiman, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate, friend of Lockett's other victims, and a witness to his crimes. The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman did not back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police. After she stated she would go to the police, Lockett decided to bury her alive. Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her while she was still breathing. She died from two wounds from a shotgun fired by Lockett. In 2000, he was convicted of murder, rape, forcible sodomy, kidnapping, assault and battery..."
Wiki
Some people just aren't fit to live. That's how they end up on death row.
Wiki
Some people just aren't fit to live. That's how they end up on death row.
8
The death of a human being, regardless of their crimes, should not be carried out in such a cavalier and reckless fashion, not because of the person/s dying but for the sake of those living. I have no doubt in the ingenuity of man, when he wishes to devise a manner and method in which to kill other men.
4
To be executed:
A burglar who shot a female homeowner in the head and killed her after putting her in a basement storeroom.
A 42 year old man who strangled an 18 year old girl at a convenience store.
A convicted rapist who beat and strangled a 26 year old woman.
A convicted murderer who stabbed a department of corrections officer to death while in prison.
The rapist and murderer of a 34 year old woman whose 11 year old daughter was beaten and left for dead.
A mother of two who was kidnapped at a gas station, taken to several ATM machines and forced to withdraw money, then raped and shot dead.
A convicted murderer sentenced to life without parole who escaped and while a fugitive murdered at least one and possibly two other men.
A man convicted of murdering a 15 year old by strangulation. They were both thieves and the murderer took turns strangling the 15 year old with another man.
The number of lives ruined by these terrible and brutal acts - mothers, daughters, sons, neighbors, friends - cannot be over-stated. Discussing them in the abstract minimizes the pain and havoc they wreak on society. It is one thing to oppose the death penalty out of concern for the wrongly accused or convicted. But those are the exception - far from the rule.
The cruel and unusual part is what happened to the victims and their families and friends. What happens to these guys is going to be justice.
A burglar who shot a female homeowner in the head and killed her after putting her in a basement storeroom.
A 42 year old man who strangled an 18 year old girl at a convenience store.
A convicted rapist who beat and strangled a 26 year old woman.
A convicted murderer who stabbed a department of corrections officer to death while in prison.
The rapist and murderer of a 34 year old woman whose 11 year old daughter was beaten and left for dead.
A mother of two who was kidnapped at a gas station, taken to several ATM machines and forced to withdraw money, then raped and shot dead.
A convicted murderer sentenced to life without parole who escaped and while a fugitive murdered at least one and possibly two other men.
A man convicted of murdering a 15 year old by strangulation. They were both thieves and the murderer took turns strangling the 15 year old with another man.
The number of lives ruined by these terrible and brutal acts - mothers, daughters, sons, neighbors, friends - cannot be over-stated. Discussing them in the abstract minimizes the pain and havoc they wreak on society. It is one thing to oppose the death penalty out of concern for the wrongly accused or convicted. But those are the exception - far from the rule.
The cruel and unusual part is what happened to the victims and their families and friends. What happens to these guys is going to be justice.
15
Good Friday is coming up, always a special occasion in Arkansas.
10
fastest spate of executions in any state in more than 40 years,
what state beat that frequency of execution in the seventies and why?
Anyone?
what state beat that frequency of execution in the seventies and why?
Anyone?
1
Got to be Texas.
1
It is inaccurate and inappropriate to call an execution after an appropriate legal process and "killing." It is a legal "execution" for the purposes of achieving a semblance of "justice," something that is important to a society. We much protect ourselves from the predators of illegal violence against innocent people. If you hat "killing" I suggest we eliminate the costly and unjust year after year delays. THAT is cruel and unusual punishment; not timely eye for an eye justice.
3
Three cheers for Arkansas for ridding society of these monsters.
6
It's what Jesus would do, right?
3
Clearly, public support for the legal murder of murderers ( because they have murdered someone, without getting permission from the government) clearly such support is do to that majority's religious indoctrination.
Christians are indoctrinated, soon after infancy, that their god arranged to have his only begotten son, murdered by the Romans, and then have the Jews blamed for this murder.
So it's clear, that the Christian god supports the use of the death penalty.
And, the Christian god obviously supports the use of crucifixion, to murder those who society sentences to death.
If Arkansas, were to crucify, it's murderers, in public, it could charge admission, tourism would flourish, and its economic woes ameliorated.
And we know that the Supreme Court would not rule against Arkansas crucifying it's murders, by classifying the use of crucifixion, cruel and/or unusual, because the majority of Court members are Christians, and to call the use of crucifixion cruel, would be contrary to the will of the Christian god.
Christians are indoctrinated, soon after infancy, that their god arranged to have his only begotten son, murdered by the Romans, and then have the Jews blamed for this murder.
So it's clear, that the Christian god supports the use of the death penalty.
And, the Christian god obviously supports the use of crucifixion, to murder those who society sentences to death.
If Arkansas, were to crucify, it's murderers, in public, it could charge admission, tourism would flourish, and its economic woes ameliorated.
And we know that the Supreme Court would not rule against Arkansas crucifying it's murders, by classifying the use of crucifixion, cruel and/or unusual, because the majority of Court members are Christians, and to call the use of crucifixion cruel, would be contrary to the will of the Christian god.
4
Ronald Wood murdered a convenience store clerk. Dennis McGuire raped and murdered a pregnant woman. Her child died. Joseph Wood murdered his ex and her father.
But let's think of how mean we are to these murderers. I think a slow and painful death is a good punishment, as well as a deterrent to future murders
But let's think of how mean we are to these murderers. I think a slow and painful death is a good punishment, as well as a deterrent to future murders
8
Serial killers, multiple murders, gang members who were cruel and committed heinous acts against humanity; all of these people deserve the death penalty to rid the world of them. They are not be rehabilitated and perform the same deadly acts ones on probation or if they escape from prison.
8
We aren't as civilized as we like to think we are.
6
There is something fundamentally wrong with our criminal justice system and execution by the sovereign is but the most obvious manifestation. Some claim execution of murderers acts as a deterrent. Then why are executions done behind closed doors? We know my state was the fist to end public execution in 1830 because of the concern that it had come to resemble a spectacle of blood lust as people came for the thrill of the kill. (So much for deterrence.) So if it is about retribution and revenge, why not follow the practice in certain parts of Afghanistan where the victim's family is given a Kalashnikov, and the option to grant mercy? If it is about justice, how is death by legal means justice for death by extralegal means? If the latter is wrong, the former must also be wrong and would seem to indicate contrary to reason that two wrongs DO make it right. We should end this barbaric and pointless practice in favor of a life sentence at labor. Having to spend the remainder of one's life deprived of freedom and any semblance of a normal life would indeed be justice and would not put the rest of us in the business of killing by sovereign proxy.
39
Why not use CO carbon monoxide poisoning?
People die quietly painlessly peacefully all the time using this method.
People die quietly painlessly peacefully all the time using this method.
3
Over the years, we have used a series of means to carry out the death penalty. Now we have settled on lethal injection because it is believed to be the most humane. There have been numerous mistakes with the cocktails chosen, mostly caused by doctors' refusal to participate. The most humane death penalty method is being undermined by medical ethics. Doctors won't compromise their standards, and as a result lethal injections are repeatedly botched. We've got lots of doctors who think they are going to heaven because thy assure that dozens of death row inmates get incompetent injections. That's our idea of how to comply with the 8th Amendment.
5
Yes those of us in healthcare take that whole
"first do no harm" thing kind of seriously.
Don't blame us for your dirty work.
"first do no harm" thing kind of seriously.
Don't blame us for your dirty work.
5
That's not the issue. Our professional societies would kick us out if we assisted in death by lethal injection. We would threaten our ability to work as physicians if we assisted.
I may not understand your point, Michjas but are you suggesting that doctors should get on board with lethal injection executions? It's the medical professions hubris that is at fault?
Let's ask the relatives of the victims if it is cruel. My guess is that the relatives would use their own means to put down these violent men. Society is better off not having these eight worthless human beings alive.
31
Thank you for your absolute implied faith in the error free US judiciary.
1
I believe the Constitution says something about cruel and unusual punishment.
These men may have committed vicious acts of unquestionable violence but does that justify torturing them to death?
These men may have committed vicious acts of unquestionable violence but does that justify torturing them to death?
Many murder victims' families are now campaigning to end the death penalty, saying it doesn't benefit anyone to meet violence with violence. They don't want the last memorial of their loved one to be the murder of another mother's son.
3
The animals that were put down were the ones who were cruel and unusual in their acts that led to this decision by the state.
We live (or are trying to) in a civilized society. It's not a free for all, act on every primal impulse society.
Act like an animal and risk being put down like one.
We live (or are trying to) in a civilized society. It's not a free for all, act on every primal impulse society.
Act like an animal and risk being put down like one.
9
How does it affect somebody to be part of a team that systematically kills eight people over the course of a week and a half? Any decent human being would be traumatized.
2
Murder is murder no matter how it is, who it is, it is still murder.
34
Murder is an illegal act; it is illegal homicide.
These executions are legal.
If you want to debate execution, learn the meaning of the words you use.
These executions are legal.
If you want to debate execution, learn the meaning of the words you use.
2
It is not.
Murder is illegal homicide. This is legal.
You just don't like it.
Murder is illegal homicide. This is legal.
You just don't like it.
1
Wrong. Death penalty is not murder.
murder ˈmərdər/Submit
noun
1. the UNLAWFUL premeditated killing of one human being by another.
murder ˈmərdər/Submit
noun
1. the UNLAWFUL premeditated killing of one human being by another.
I will believe the death penalty is a deterrent when you show me a killer who says "I wasn't going to commit murder but I realized I wouldn't be executed and only spend the rest of my life in prison."
That is, of course, nobody ever. The death penalty is, then, purely for punishment. And if it includes torture, as these cases suggest, then let the proponents state clearly that's what they want. Then let them go to church and explain why.
That is, of course, nobody ever. The death penalty is, then, purely for punishment. And if it includes torture, as these cases suggest, then let the proponents state clearly that's what they want. Then let them go to church and explain why.
83
Every killer fears death more than time in prison. That's why they hope for, they try to get, they happily take, deals for time rather than death. Not none of them; every one.
Talk to any prosecutor, any defense attorney, any worker in the penal system. They will, one and all, tell you this is the case. And so will any report, even in the press, about any possible death penalty case.
Your argument is built on sand.
Talk to any prosecutor, any defense attorney, any worker in the penal system. They will, one and all, tell you this is the case. And so will any report, even in the press, about any possible death penalty case.
Your argument is built on sand.
3
Every murderer who faces the possibility of execution fears it more than time in prison. That's why every one hopes for, tries to get, and will take, any deal that means prison time rather then execution.
Ask any prosecutor, any defense attorney, any penal system worker. They will all tell you this is so.
Your argument stands on sand.
Ask any prosecutor, any defense attorney, any penal system worker. They will all tell you this is so.
Your argument stands on sand.
Your assertion that "nobody ever" was deterred by the death penalty is unprovable.
They are obviously using too little midazolam. Does anyone recall the spate of deaths when midazolam was first released and some GI doctors were using it in their offices? There were several deaths that occurred. The biggest mistake made in the drug cocktail is the use of pancuronium for paralysis. This particular drug has a 3-5 minute onset, depending on dose. If they used a faster onset paralyzingly agent, it would have effect simultaneous with the onset of unconsciousness. Then add some potassium and voila! You have performed a foolproof and decent execution. They need to consult an anesthesiologist, if they could find one that supports capital punishment.
1
There is no such thing as a "decent" execution. Murder is murder.
4
or, one that doesn't believe in torturing anyone to death, even a convicted killer.
3
So should we spend tax payer money to obtain a reliable supply of Sodium thiopental, the old, reliable sedative used in lethal injection?
If you want to oppose the death penalty as barbaric, state sponsored murder, then argue for the end of the death penalty. Don't celebrate EU pharmaceutical companies that won't sell reliable drugs, then argue against using less reliable drugs.
The state is upholding the law and decision of Juries, even if the law is flawed.
If you want to oppose the death penalty as barbaric, state sponsored murder, then argue for the end of the death penalty. Don't celebrate EU pharmaceutical companies that won't sell reliable drugs, then argue against using less reliable drugs.
The state is upholding the law and decision of Juries, even if the law is flawed.
6
Without even going through the fact of the case, there is something unseemly and vastly uncivilized about executing a whole bunch people hastily before the drugs reach an expiration date.
"Well Governor, the drug's about to go bad, so we just oughtta clean out the whole back inventory of prisoners instead of lettin' it all go to waste."
I can't even imagine a kill shelter doing that with unwanted strays.
"Well Governor, the drug's about to go bad, so we just oughtta clean out the whole back inventory of prisoners instead of lettin' it all go to waste."
I can't even imagine a kill shelter doing that with unwanted strays.
49
They are not "strays."
They are guilty of killing one or more people. Their victims might have been your loved ones. Or mine.
Tell us again how Arkansas is just cleaning out their "back inventory."
They are guilty of killing one or more people. Their victims might have been your loved ones. Or mine.
Tell us again how Arkansas is just cleaning out their "back inventory."
5
Ohio wants a second execution attempt on the same man, Romell Broom, who survived a grisly 2-hour failed attempt to inject him in every vein, even hitting bone in his ankles, in September 2009. The State said it 'didn't count'.
The full story of his life, including anomalies in his trial & conviction, is here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/380992
The full story of his life, including anomalies in his trial & conviction, is here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/380992
4
Think about their victims, and how they suffered a "cruel and unusual" death. I don't care one bit if these convicted murderers suffer while they get what they deserve. This is not worth fretting over. Get it right, people.
23
And if a prisoner is put to death and then later found out to be innocent? What then Josh? Can we bring him back, can we rectify this ghastly mistake. As you say, get it right people, get it right.
6
Why must Arkansas or any other state execute? What is the moral justification of a state government killing a prisoner? Are we not blinded by the rush to revenge? And as Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."From a moral point of view, the death penalty should be challenged on constitutional or other legal grounds for these reasons: (1) The fact of state governments or the federal governments in effect hiring executioners (what else can they be called?) to kill, whether through injection or some other means, as firing squads in Utah, contradicts the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment; and (2) the fact that the administration of the death penalty depends on geography, on the state. One cannot be excited in Vermont or Illinois, as opposed to Texas and Utah.
26
" One cannot be excited in Vermont or Illinois, as opposed to Texas and Utah."
Utah's pretty overrated.
Utah's pretty overrated.
Death not merely without dignity, but at the hands of what thereafter will be called a state-authorized mass murder.
You want to live in a state where speed and convenience is more important than following the law?
Those who order this will be spitting in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord and all men's savior.
You will be damned.
You want to live in a state where speed and convenience is more important than following the law?
Those who order this will be spitting in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord and all men's savior.
You will be damned.
8
Tell the family's of the victims. Have you read about their crimes?
7
Very horrible people - but that doesn't mean we all have to be murderers like they are.
5
Why do people continue to insist that procedures that clearly don't work, must be repeated over and over again.
Why not simply give the governor a pistol, Then the leaders in the house and senate and then down the list of politicians.
Why not simply give the governor a pistol, Then the leaders in the house and senate and then down the list of politicians.
10
This appalling practice shows that the USA is no better than Iran, China or Saudi Arabia.
More appalling maybe, because while priding itself as a Light Unto the Nations, the USA has a whole industry of death.
It's not the criminals, its the practitioners of State murder, who brutalize the State itself.
More appalling maybe, because while priding itself as a Light Unto the Nations, the USA has a whole industry of death.
It's not the criminals, its the practitioners of State murder, who brutalize the State itself.
77
And indeed several of those countries use execution methods that are much quicker and less painful, such as what used to be done in this country. There is no doubt about what is going on in a beheading or firing squad. Capital punishment is not a tidy affair, and yet those methods are the fastest and least painful. The US prefers to use "clean" methods that are less jarring to onlookers but ultimately much longer and more painful, as if to hide from the reality of what is being done.
The use of medical technology is another controversy not gotten at in this article, as many medical practitioners are distancing themselves from participation in lethal injections, as "first do no harm" cannot apply when inserting an IV of a lethal substance. This means prison personnel are expected to find the veins and administer the injections.
The use of medical technology is another controversy not gotten at in this article, as many medical practitioners are distancing themselves from participation in lethal injections, as "first do no harm" cannot apply when inserting an IV of a lethal substance. This means prison personnel are expected to find the veins and administer the injections.
9
Let the spree of cruelty and unusualness begin. We've become a cruel an unusual country, and this is a suitable metaphor. We need a belly full before we wake up. Of course these will be botched, one after another, with ghastly results.
32
Leaving aside for this argument the question of whether we should be using the death penalty or not, this business about the mechanics of doing "euthanasia" (inducement of death using humane techniques) is so much balderdash.
Just call up the local licensed veterinary drug distributor and there is plenty of very humane euthanasia solution to be had.
There are many different protocols used, combinations of tranquilization first followed by euthanasia solution intravenously that work quite well, dependability and very smoothly.
All these stories about disastrous execution procedures are the result of incompetence. Nothing more.
I reiterate here that this comment does not touch the question of whether we should be doing executions or not.
Just call up the local licensed veterinary drug distributor and there is plenty of very humane euthanasia solution to be had.
There are many different protocols used, combinations of tranquilization first followed by euthanasia solution intravenously that work quite well, dependability and very smoothly.
All these stories about disastrous execution procedures are the result of incompetence. Nothing more.
I reiterate here that this comment does not touch the question of whether we should be doing executions or not.
14
Too many words just call it what it is, legalized murder.
14
Pro or not of capital punishment, it's sad when once again decisions are made based on market and consumption and not principles.
11
Well, I mean it's not like we are North Korea or anything, spending vast sums on and stockpiling weapons and killing "prisoners." I mean this isn't North Korea, Danny... Is this North Korea?
2
And we don't use anti-aircraft guns.
When you say "rushing to execute" are you referring to those who have been on death row for decades? Second, I'm not sure why there is such confusion on the issue of inducing unconsciousness before a lethal dose of potassium is given. Every year millions of Americans are rendered unconscious by an IV injected medication. It's call inducing anesthesia for their surgery. I have issue with the death penalty for sure, but this issue of inducing unconsciousness is a canard.
12
Whilst I'm against executions on principle I never understood why they don't just give them massive doses of Morphine. That's how doctors quietly help terminal patients pass when they can't euthanize them legally. Presumably getting incredibly high followed by quietly passing away is better than the ordeals many of these executions put prisoners through. Based on some of these stories it would be kinder to behead them, if only because it's over quickly.
31
Beheading is messy, something Americans seem unable to tolerate; the heart continues to pump, basically until the torso is exsanguinated. It is not known how quickly unconsciousness sets in; the brain is undamaged and oxygenated.
Some beheaded men promised to try to signal by blinking eyes, and that persists for many seconds.
A heavy tumbling and fairly slow bullet into the brain stem angled up should destroy the brain in less than a second, much less, so that any pain is truly low and death is instantaneous. If we must have judicial murder, that seems relatively humane. But it does not have the "peaceful" appearance of lethal injection. It is louder, messier, and much apt to be botched.
Surely somebody can determine a restraining device and a remote control so that the executioner need not be "up close and personal."
Some beheaded men promised to try to signal by blinking eyes, and that persists for many seconds.
A heavy tumbling and fairly slow bullet into the brain stem angled up should destroy the brain in less than a second, much less, so that any pain is truly low and death is instantaneous. If we must have judicial murder, that seems relatively humane. But it does not have the "peaceful" appearance of lethal injection. It is louder, messier, and much apt to be botched.
Surely somebody can determine a restraining device and a remote control so that the executioner need not be "up close and personal."
1
Arkansas's (as well as other states') execution drug 'problem' can be easily resolved. Repeal the death penalty and re-sentence the condemned inmates to life in prison.
44
The eagerness of deep red Bible Belt states to end human life always leads me to one thought: Who would Jesus kill?
184
It is ironic that these bible thumping states are full of loud protestations of morality by such manifestly immoral people.
3
You think Jesus would accept a seat on the Supreme Court?
His robe would have to be black, not white.
Tough choice.
His robe would have to be black, not white.
Tough choice.
He was "lawfully" condemned so I guess they would.
Dennis McGuire raped and slashed the throat of a 30 weeks pregnant woman, Joy Stewart, who was 22 at the time. Funny how you don't mention her in this column. I imagine she made choking sounds and was gasping for air when she was dying too. Imagine how horrific her death was. I don't feel sorry for Dennis McGuire. I'm not going to research the other men's crimes here, but I'm not worried about their comfort level at the time of their execution. Some people have what's coming to them.
61
well put!
4
The death penalty is not set up on a legal basis of pain and reenacting the crimes of the convicted criminal. There is a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. If we are creating horrible suffering for criminals as part of their punishment, we are on weak moral footing.
There are less painful methods that have the same result: the execution of the criminal. So, what do we really want? A horror show where we are torturing people for hours before killing them, or simply the end of their lives as the ultimate punishment?
There are less painful methods that have the same result: the execution of the criminal. So, what do we really want? A horror show where we are torturing people for hours before killing them, or simply the end of their lives as the ultimate punishment?
17
Just because one is against the death penalty does not mean that one feels that the crimes committed were not that bad. Life in prison without the chance of parole seems to do the job equally as well.
7
It is time we woke up to the realization that it is wrong to take life. Death penalty is abhorrent and nations struggling with evolution in civilized behavior carry the punishment on their legal code. USA is in the company of Saudi Arabia, China etc. it doesn't belong there. Arkansas will do well to avoid this ignominy of serial executions.
103
This article is just the usual special pleading from people who will use any argument and any means to prevent any lawful executions (though I suspect they will be real quiet when it is Dylann Roof's turn).
25
Many people are able to separate death penalty from method, as part of the prohibition against cruel punishment.
Utah is the only state with a firing squad, and some people support faster, more effective techniques like beheading or shooting.
Utah is the only state with a firing squad, and some people support faster, more effective techniques like beheading or shooting.
2
It doesn't matter who is being executed. I'm black and will strongly oppose Dylan Roof's execution as well - if only because sustaining the death penalty when we have alternative ways to keep society safe, reflects the same disrespect for all human life that caused his barbarity to be visited on society in the first place.
3
Even despicable murderers like Roof should not be executed. The issue is what it does to society when the state kills people? We should not have China and Iran as role models for our punishment system. But even more important, there is no evidence the death penalty deters crime and lots of evidence that the system is racist and deeply flawed; although the rhetoric claims it only is used for the most "heinous crimes," we know that is not true. Race, poverty, mental disability, sex, and age are much more important determinants of who is selected for death than the nature of the crime. Finally, we also know it does not bring closure to victims' families-another familiar talking point. With all that's wrong with it, there is no "good" way to do it. The injection was considered the best way (others were considered too inhumane) until it became apparent it has numerous problems. While some people seem to like the idea of torturing the prisoners before killing them, they probably couldn't do it themselves which would speak to the need to hire sadists who would enjoy their jobs to carry out the execution. Nice thought.
3
The problem with the death penalty is that it's final.
"156 individuals have been exonerated from death row--that is, found to be innocent and released-since 1973. In other words, for every 10 people who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S., one person has been set free." ~ innocence national coalition to abolish the death penalty
*In 1989 the first DNA exoneration took place.
*20 of the 349 of the people exonerated served time on death row
*149 true suspects/perpetrators identitied.
~the innocence project
Forget the fact that what Arkansas is planning to do is cruel to both the person being executed and the team forced to complete the execution with questionable drugs. Once someone is executed there is no do over, death is final. Forensic science is constantly changing and expanding and as long as an innocent person is still alive the possibility exists that new science may exonerate them.
Life in prison is more cost effective and more humane. A nation that prides itself on the rule of law should not be in the business of putting people to death.
"156 individuals have been exonerated from death row--that is, found to be innocent and released-since 1973. In other words, for every 10 people who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S., one person has been set free." ~ innocence national coalition to abolish the death penalty
*In 1989 the first DNA exoneration took place.
*20 of the 349 of the people exonerated served time on death row
*149 true suspects/perpetrators identitied.
~the innocence project
Forget the fact that what Arkansas is planning to do is cruel to both the person being executed and the team forced to complete the execution with questionable drugs. Once someone is executed there is no do over, death is final. Forensic science is constantly changing and expanding and as long as an innocent person is still alive the possibility exists that new science may exonerate them.
Life in prison is more cost effective and more humane. A nation that prides itself on the rule of law should not be in the business of putting people to death.
118
Every year, in the US, about 800 people are murdered by individuals who had previously committed murder, been convicted, served time in prison, and been released.
Since 1973, that is some 32,000 innocent people killed because convicted killers weren't executed. That sort of overshadows your 153.
Admittedly, we are not perfect, but I suggest that condemning 32,000 innocents to death to avoid 153 possibly unjust executions might just be too high a price to pay for an attempt at perfection.
Since 1973, that is some 32,000 innocent people killed because convicted killers weren't executed. That sort of overshadows your 153.
Admittedly, we are not perfect, but I suggest that condemning 32,000 innocents to death to avoid 153 possibly unjust executions might just be too high a price to pay for an attempt at perfection.
2
There is a difference between not executing someone and releasing them. No one is arguing for releasing these inmates.
And, to use a common argument from the pro-death side, what if one of those 153 innocent execution victims was a member of your family?
And, to use a common argument from the pro-death side, what if one of those 153 innocent execution victims was a member of your family?
2
There’s a hard-expiration on “midazolam”, like … milk? Will it curdle in coffee if the date is passed by a day or two? Insensitive comment? Probably: I’m not the most politically correct contributor to this forum.
Focus attention on whether or not these individuals are worthy of saving, not on the speed of their translation to a plane where Minos will judge which Circle of Hell in which to place them for all eternity. If there was cahooting at the trial level, if there is a hint of real racial or ethnic bias, even if conditions suggest tenable extenuating circumstances, I’ll support stays of executions until further investigations can take place to determine the truth and make balanced determinations of fates. But lambasting Arkansas for seeking to clear out Death Row of America’s biggest winners – murderers and rapists? Cry me a river.
If midazolam isn’t as effective as it might be at the dosages administered, then administer higher dosages.
This argument is merely one more attempt to manufacture yet another barrier to keep a state from exercising its dwindling sovereignty on an issue that some oppose viscerally: state-sponsored death as punishment for exceptionally horrific crimes. It has little to do with the relative effectiveness of midazolam, and the pace of executions in Arkansas is immaterial: the issue is that some oppose capital punishment by whatever means, and so long as there is a pretext for arguing against it there will be those willing to seize it.
Focus attention on whether or not these individuals are worthy of saving, not on the speed of their translation to a plane where Minos will judge which Circle of Hell in which to place them for all eternity. If there was cahooting at the trial level, if there is a hint of real racial or ethnic bias, even if conditions suggest tenable extenuating circumstances, I’ll support stays of executions until further investigations can take place to determine the truth and make balanced determinations of fates. But lambasting Arkansas for seeking to clear out Death Row of America’s biggest winners – murderers and rapists? Cry me a river.
If midazolam isn’t as effective as it might be at the dosages administered, then administer higher dosages.
This argument is merely one more attempt to manufacture yet another barrier to keep a state from exercising its dwindling sovereignty on an issue that some oppose viscerally: state-sponsored death as punishment for exceptionally horrific crimes. It has little to do with the relative effectiveness of midazolam, and the pace of executions in Arkansas is immaterial: the issue is that some oppose capital punishment by whatever means, and so long as there is a pretext for arguing against it there will be those willing to seize it.
10
The drug was administered at 15 times its normal dosage and it still didn't work.
One doesn't need a pretext for arguing against the death penalty. Those who argue for it are consumed with blood lust and vengeance.
One doesn't need a pretext for arguing against the death penalty. Those who argue for it are consumed with blood lust and vengeance.
5
Eliza:
No ... those who argue for it simply recognize that society shouldn't be called on to suffer such criminals among us, and expect that should one spend his life in prison instead, people like you will dedicate their lives to getting him out and inflicting him yet again on us.
No ... those who argue for it simply recognize that society shouldn't be called on to suffer such criminals among us, and expect that should one spend his life in prison instead, people like you will dedicate their lives to getting him out and inflicting him yet again on us.
1
You are implying things I never said but then you conservatives are very good at that. Perhaps it would be a better use of our time to improve the system to try and ensure innocent men do not die.
4