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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26736 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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The drug cocktail for lethal injection includes three drugs: one to anesthetize, one to paralyze, and one to stop the heart. The paralytic is "meant to preserve the dignity of the prisoner," according to Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "The paralytic performs no legitimate function in the execution itself. It’s so that it’s less difficult for the eyewitnesses to watch.” That's the purpose of the sterile IV lines and the whole pseudo-medical procedure, isn't it? To reassure the audience that this is being done Scientifically.

Last I'd heard, Texas dropped the other two and uses an overdose of veterinary anesthetics these days. This is A) not the most humane method of execution and B) not that easy to watch. No doubt if the condemned was offered the choice of "after religious counseling you can face the guillotine, or a lethal overdose of horse tranquilizer" they would pick the former. But they're not being offered it! A lawyer who simply opposes the death penalty argues with a straight face that it's cruel and unusual punishment because of the manner of execution, then refuses to name a better one, because the goal is to drag out the thirty year long process of execution long enough that the state gives up. Recently the supreme court has called them on it, but I have no hopes for progressive-activist lawyers facing sanctions for this frivolous argument.

or the person dies of natural causes, which I guess is technically a win

In Japan the actual method is hanging, and, true enough, sometimes it is carried out, but more often people sit on death row for years--and though they may be physically alive, they are never told their execution date. This can go on for decades. When they are informed, this occurs mere hours before the execution. (link in Japanese)

If we are talking cruel and unusual, this qualifies in my view.

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