The lethal injection execution protocol in the US consists of a cocktail of three drugs: sodium thiopental supposedly anaesthetizes the victim, before pancuronium bromide paralyses the muscles and potassium chloride stops the heart.
Hernandez’s statement serves to further dispel the myth that there is such thing as a painless execution by lethal injection, a myth already severely discredited after numerous botched executions including those of Romell Broom in 2010 and Angel Nieves Diaz in 2006.
Broom was awarded a one week stay of execution, after execution staff tried for over 2 hours to find a suitable vein, while he grimaced and cried in pain. A medical examination of Diaz after his execution showed that needles which were supposed to inject his veins were instead pushed all the way through his blood vessels into the surrounding tissue, burning both arms.
Doctors are not permitted to administer the lethal injection because they are signatories to the Hippocratic Oath. Instead, death row inmates are executed by wardens who have no medical experience and no knowledge of the science of anaesthesiology, yet are expected to successfully administer a complex cocktail of three drugs. Telling statements, like that of Diaz’s main executioner who told a review committee in 2007 he had “no medical training and no qualifications" show the inherent flaws in attempts to sanitise state executions by replacing earlier execution methods (such as hanging and electrocution) with the lethal injection.
In addition to the incompetency associated with administration of the injection, US departments of corrections are currently scrabbling around the world to source their medicines, after Hospira, the last manufacturer of sodium thiopental (the aesthetic used for the three drug cocktail) pulled out of the market in 2010. The shortage of execution drugs, which has lead to non FDA approved medicines being used in executions, has caused nationwide litigation with the legitimacy of these medicines now called into question.
Hernandez may have died in agony. The US courts repeatedly confirm that the lethal injection does not qualify as cruel and inhumane treatment. Yet incompetent administration of randomly sourced drugs can lead to a tortuous end for death row inmates.
Reprieve's Stop the Lethal Injection Project (SLIP) aims to block the use of medical technology in capital punishment, reducing executions and debunking the myth of the humane execution.
'Stop Lethal injections' was filmed by Murat Gokmen
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