Wednesday, April 30, 2014

So the state of Oklahoma tortured a man to death last night...

[Clayton] Lockett, 38, received the first dose of the three-drug cocktail at 6:23 p.m.The drugs were midazolam, which causes unconsciousness; vecuronium bromide, which stops respiration; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. They are administered in that order. The state has said the procedure is meant to involve three doctors with hand-held syringes, injecting the drugs into IV lines in both the inmate’s arms.At 6:33 p.m., 10 minutes after the execution began, a doctor said Lockett was unconscious. But three minutes later, Lockett began to nod and mumble and writhe, witnesses said. [...]A spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections [...] confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Lockett did not die immediately after the lethal injection was administered.“The director did say that it appears that a vein [in Lockett's body] blew up or exploded, it collapsed, and the drugs were not getting into the system like they were supposed to,” spokesman Jerry Massie said.Massie said that after the new injection was administered, the condemned man “was obviously showing some movement.”“After several minutes, five minutes, he was not unconscious,” Massie said. “They made a decision to halt the execution, but at 7:06 he suffered a massive heart attack and expired.”

1 comment:

Purple library guy said...

Leaving aside the basic barbarity of having capital punishment at all, I've never understood why the Americans insist on such horrible Rube Goldberg methods. Electric chairs that leave people convulsing for ages as their flesh burns, weird combinations of nasty drugs that cause intense pain as they kill except we normally can't tell because the person is paralyzed while it's happening or some damn thing . . .

Veterinarians kill living creatures without pain every day; you never hear about someone's dog writhing in pain for twenty minutes while the vet is doing them in. Why can't the capital punishers manage it? Or if they can't be trusted with drugs, at least go with the guillotine. No ifs, ands or buts with the guillotine--snick, head off, dead.

I think they use awful drugs because of some puritanical/vengeful streak. Capital punishment is a punishment, it's revenge, so they can't overdose them on morphine or something, it might make them feel good as they die and how punishing would that be? And no guillotine because no matter how barbaric the electric chair actually is, it looks scientific and there's no messy blood to remind them of that barbarism. The guillotine may actually be instant and reliable, but it looks like what it really is--killing someone. The Americans prefer a good dose of hypocrisy with their vengeful barbarism.

Popular Posts