First use of animal sedative on death row

kohenari:

I’ve been writing about the problems faced by lethal injection enthusiasts for quite some time now, the most pressing of which is a general lack of drugs to actually poison someone to death properly (see here, here, and here).

But now they’ve got it all figured out:

Animal tranquilizers!

Just in case you weren’t sure whether or not human beings in the United States can be treated exactly like unwanted cats and dogs at a local animal shelter, apparently there’s no conceivable constitutional problem … at least according to judges on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A shortage of the sedative used during lethal injection executions in the US has spurred the search for a substitute. Last week, John David Duty became the first man to be executed in Oklahoma using pentobarbital, a drug normally used to sedate animals.

According to CBS news, Duty had challenged the state’s decision to use pentobarbital, arguing it could be inhumane because there was a risk he might be paralyzed but still aware when a painful third drug is administered to stop the heart.

…

Supporters of lethal injection argue that using pentobarbital at the dose Oklahoma state proposed (5000 milligrams) doesn’t carry a significant risk of paralysis, and would probably cause death on its own within minutes. “There didn’t appear to be any issues with the new drug,” Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson Jerry Massie said. The federal court agreed, rejecting Duty’s plea that the use of pentobarbital was cruel and inhumane.

USA! USA! USA!

HT: W. Thomas Webb.

Read this. Read it, read it, read it and talk about it with the people you know.

Animal sedatives. Chew on those words. And now imagine they are administered to a human being in the care of the state. Think of that again.