can you please help me brifly summarize this
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Tennessee's new lethal injection procedures are cruel and unusual punishment, interrupting plans to execute a killer next week.
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The protocol "presents a substantial risk of unnecessary pain" and violates death row inmate Edward Jerome Harbison's constitutional protections under the Eighth Amendment, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger said.
The new protocol, released in April, does not ensure that inmates are properly anesthetized before the lethal injection is administered, Trauger said, which could "result in a terrifying, excruciating death."
A spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office said officials are reviewing the ruling and haven't decided whether to appeal. Gov. Phil Bredesen's office had no immediate comment.
Harbison was scheduled to be executed Sept. 26 for beating an elderly woman to death during a burglary in 1983.
Trauger did not issue a stay or throw out the death sentence for Harbison, who has lost all his appeals. He can be legally executed once the state adopts a valid method of execution, she said.
Another federal judge in Nashville this year ordered a delay in the execution of convicted killer Philip Workman, citing the likelihood that the state's new guidelines could still cause unconstitutional pain and suffering. But a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted that temporary restraining order, and Workman was executed by lethal injection May 9.
Bredesen, a Democrat, in February placed a 90-day moratorium on executions because of several glaring problems with the state's execution guidelines, including conflicting instructions that mixed lethal injection instructions with those for the electric chair.
George Little, State Department of Correction commissioner, adopted the new protocol despite having knowledge about the remaining risks of excessive pain for inmates, Trauger said. A spokeswoman for Little did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Little did not give enough consideration to a recommendation to discard the standard three-drug lethal injection cocktail in favor of a single drug method, Trauger said. Current training and medical expertise are not sufficient to ensure a painless execution, she said.
Most states use three drugs 鈥?thiopental, an anesthetic; pancuronium bromide, a nerve blocker and muscle paralyzer; and potassium chloride, a drug to stop the heart. Each is supposed to be capable of killing by itself, but if not, the anesthetic is supposed to render the inmate unconscious while the other drugs do the job.
Lethal injection has been adopted by 37 states as a cheaper and more humane alternative to electrocution, gas chambers and other execution methods. But at least 11 states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel.
The issue came to a head last year in California when a federal judge ordered that doctors assist in killing Michael Morales, who was convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl. Doctors refused, and legal arguments continue.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month lifted a more than year-old stay on executions in Missouri, refusing to block capital punishment while a death-row inmate asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the state's form of lethal injection to be an unconstitutionally cruel punishment.
Tennessee executed convicted child killer Daryl Holton last week in its first electrocution since 1960.
Bredesen on Friday commuted a death sentence for Michael Joe Boyd because of "grossly inadequate" legal representation during post-conviction hearings. Boyd, who now goes by Mika'eel Abdullah Abdus-Samad, was convicted of murdering a man during an armed robbery in 1986. The death sentence was commuted to life without possibility of parole Basically they're going to put someone to death but they're not allowed to cause them any pain when they do so because hell, that's inhumane.
The combination of drugs makes a difference to the time it takes to die and what shuts down first. I bet this judge would not say this if it was his wife or daughter murdered A slow death is too good for these killers. this isnt cruel or inhumane because they "chose" the punishment.they knew what the punishment would be before they commited the crime meaning they"chose" the punishment renduring the whole cruel and unusual punishment arguement mute. this is bull. The criminal who has committed a violent crime might experience 1 second of something....might and I say a BIG might.
IV drugs go through the system so fast that it is considered immediate, instantaneous,
I worked in a hospital for a long time and one our anesthesiologist used to do lethal injections since a Doc has to do that.
While doing a bowel wound, seems it was a gun shot, he got to talking about all the infamous people he had met and killed. Somebody asked what they were given and he said it was 3 drugs
they were given this massive amount of barbiturate to put them into a coma, they were hit with potassium to cause heart death and i'm thinking he said it was something like a third drug stop all the nuero activity incase something wanted to squirm. The first drug alone is fatal, the second drug is fatal in seconds if that long, the third also is a fatal dose.
they suffer all right, in hell. otherwise that has to be the most painless death you can have. You go to sleep.
think about the horror of fighting for your life and being murdered and they are worred about a possible momentary inconvience....
I'm hostile when it comes to criminals, kill them all
lets have a safe country for our families Almost all the states use the same 3-drug combination for lethal injections: sodium pentothal (an anesthetic, also called Thiopental sodium), pancuronium bromide (a paralytic agent, also called Pavulon), and potassium chloride (stops the heart and causes death). Only one state, New Jersey (which has a moratorium) uses just the first and third drugs.
If the first drug has not worked, the prisoner will be conscious while he suffocates, but because of the second drug, none of the witnesses will be aware of his agony. The paralytic drug prevents thrashing around, not just squirming.
We have a death penalty, not a "torture penalty."
Hope this answers your question.
For an answerer three below mine. Edit: Lethal injections do not use a massive dose of barbituarates.
Edit: At least one recent execution took over 30 minutes.
"Momentary inconvenience??" I think not.
Edit to the same answerer-- if the anesthesiooglist that you mentioned did, in fact, participate in executions, he has violated the Hippocratic oath, sworn to by all physicians.
Edit- the only states where the drugs used are unspecified are Kansas, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia. Of these, Kentucky has carried out one execution by lethal injection, Nevada 11,
Pennsylvania 3, South Carolina 31, Virginia 70 and the rest none. |
