1000 painful deaths

Alex Harpe on the 1000th execution by lethal injection in the United States.

You have been up all night thinking about your life and the decisions and circumstances that have led you to this point. Maybe you regret some of your actions, maybe you don’t. You hear the heavy steps of the guards outside your cell and you know that the time has come. They are here to take you to be killed.

You are walked to the execution room and strapped down to a gurney. A nervous looking man walks up to you and rubs some alcohol on a spot on either arm. You briefly wonder why they are sterilizing things when they are trying to kill you. You feel a slight prick as he inserts an IV into one of the arms. He then moves to the other side of you and you feel another prick. This time it is more painful. The needle is pulled out and you realise that he his missed the vein. This process is repeated for about 15 minutes until he is satisfied that the IV is in correctly. You can see blood flowing down your arm from the places where the vein was missed. The man walks away and goes behind a nearby curtain.

After a few minutes have passed you suddenly feel extremely drowsy. You feel a sudden sense of panic as you realise the moment has come and they are busy killing you. You try to struggle, but within seconds all has faded to black.

Suddenly you are woken by an excruciating pain in your arm. You try to open your eyes or cry out, but you are unable to move. You realise that something is terribly wrong. You can hear the shuffling of someone moving to the left and behind you. The pain in your arm is unbearable. You are finding it very difficult to breathe. It feels like you are suffocating and there is a terrible sensation in your lungs. You try to suck in as much air as possible, but are unable to make your lungs work and you realise that you are being suffocated to death. You can feel the surge of adrenalin in your body as you keep thinking to yourself that it was meant to be painless. Just as you feel that you can bear no more you feel an intense burning around your heart. It feels like they have opened your chest and are now proceeding to pour molten rock on your insides. You once again try to scream, but are still unable to move. After what seems an eternity everything once again fades to black.

This might have been what Marvallous Keene experienced in his final minutes of life. He was executed by the State of Ohio on the 21st of July and became the thousandth person to be executed by lethal injection in the US. According to a report by the University of Miami 88% of inmates that have been executed by lethal injection have had levels of sedatives in their blood that are considered too low for surgery, while 43% of inmates had such low levels of thiopental that it is likely that they were aware of what was happening to them.

Ohio employs lethal injection as the chosen method of execution, as do most US states. The theory behind an execution by lethal injection is relatively simple. The condemned is administered three different drugs in sequential order. The first, sodium thiopental, is a short acting barbiturate and is often used in surgical procedures. This drug is meant to render the victim unconscious, and given the quantity used would often ultimately lead to death on its own.

The second drug used is pancuronium bromide, which is a muscle relaxant. This drug is administered in order to paralyse the respiratory muscles, which will cause the brain to be starved of oxygen, thus causing death.

Potassium chloride, or to most of us the salt used to de-ice roads, is the final drug to be administered. In the case of executions this drug causes cardiac arrest and then death. It is this drug that in fact kills most victims of lethal injection.

The problems that arise from execution by lethal injection are numerous. Very little formal research is done on this area specifically because of the overwhelming reluctance of doctors to be involved with any area of executions. This lack of engagement by professional medics may also lead to so called ‘botched executions’, where an inmate takes much longer to die than the average 7-10 minutes, because untrained prison staff are given the responsibility of inserting IVs or administering drugs. Due to the lack of research it is also unclear why, despite the doses used, prisoners often seem to retain feeling and consciousness, despite their paralysed state. IV’s can take up to half an hour to be inserted if there is difficulty finding a vein, and there have been cases where the needle has pierced the vein and gone out the other side. In these cases the cocktail of drugs is injected into the soft tissue surrounding the vein, leading to extreme and prolonged pain and the need to administer additional doses.

These problems meant that for a number of months during 2008 an effective moratorium was placed on the death penalty in the US (with the notable exception of Texas, which continued with executions) while the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of lethal injections in the case of Baze v Rees. The Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty by lethal injection, but in doing so acknowledged that there was a likelihood that pain was involved in the process. In a judgment which curiously seemed to bypass the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the Court stated that the potential level of pain caused was within acceptable parameters considering the desired outcome.

That this method of execution continues to be used, and that it is used on such a great scale is an indictment of the justice system of one of the greatest countries in the world. The judgment in Baze v. Rees demeans the Supreme Court, and forces it to confront the fundamental truth that it is impossible to impose the death penalty in a humane and dignified manner. Instead of recognising that a society founded on the principles of equality and justice cannot sustain both capital punishment and international credibility, the USSC have once again abandoned the lessons learned by Justice Blackmun, and “tinker[ed] with the machinery of death”.

As Thomas Douglas once said “Every society is judged by how it treats the least fortunate amongst them”, a sentiment that has been echoed by numerous recent US politicians and Presidents. Prisoners are often some of the least fortunate and most disempowered people in society. Not only do they have every aspect of their lives controlled by the state, but they have also often lived through extremely brutal, isolating and traumatic events. Is it not time that the US started to grant its least fortunate inhabitants at least their basic human rights?