Death Penalty Drug Switch Ignites Controversy
A decision to change one of the drugs Texas uses for lethal injections in its busy execution chamber has sparked anew the controversy over the state’s death penalty.
Two inmates filed suit this week against the state corrections department over its closed-door decision-making process. Lawyers for the inmates also called for a federal investigation into whether the state had illegally obtained death penalty drugs used in nearly all of the state’s previous 466 executions since 1982. And the sole American manufacturer of the drug that Texas plans to use urged state officials not to use it in executions ...
Comments (4)
Gary Lawson
If a person has been found guilty of committing a crime and been sentenced to be put to death and we use as humane methods as reasonably possible as available from time to time, and there are not just one method, but there are several, then let's not debate the very brief moment of pain or fear of the convicted. Let us carry out the will of the people without so much hand wringing. We should do more to punish and try and re-socialize those who can be returned to a productive life among a law abiding society but we should put to sleep those who have committed, often more than once, those crimes that warrant the death penalty. Electrocution, firing squad, hanging. All those are quick. They may be ugly to watch but so too were the heinous and often very vicouls crimes that most sentenced to death committed.
annie03
To Gary Lawson: The ""will of the people"? Our civil society is based on laws, not the will of people. The "people" are often in the wrong (study some history). Not so long ago, the will of the people was responsible for thousands of lynchings (of human beings). And what of those many hundred humans who were wrongly convicted? Please, let's evolve into a better, more humane society rather than stay entrenched in a power grabbing, "god devoted, god fearing," punitive, "war of all against all" society.
annie03
To Gary Lawson: The "will of the people"? Our civil society is based on laws, not the will of people. The "people" are often in the wrong (study some history). Not so long ago, the will of the people was responsible for thousands of lynchings (of human beings). And what of those many hundred humans who were wrongly convicted? Please, let's evolve into a better, more humane society rather than stay entrenched in a power grabbing, "god devoted, god fearing," punitive, "war of all against all" society.
Tucano Fulano
We suppose the kooks want the same needle re-used, too. Far simpler to offer a choice to the condemned by process of elimination of 5 out of 6 choices the execution will proceed with the choice not eliminated. Choices could include, beaten to death with a baseball bat, throat sawed open with a dull knife till major arteries pump out all lifeblood, hit by vehicle driven by a drunk, stiletto into the heart, hanging, firing squad, electrocution, drug overdose, drowning, decapitation, or any of several other methods the condemned may have used to kill.