A death worse than a dog's

03.05.06

For the last twelve years, I have delighted in the companionship of a golden retriever, rescued from neglect as a puppy. He is the most amiable dog in the world. He is getting on in years, and I know that in the not too distant future a vet is going to encourage me to have him put down. I hope it never comes to this, but at least when we euthanase animals the injection administered by the vet will not contain the drug potassium chloride, as it has been found to cause intense pain unless the animal is deeply unconscious.

This is not a reassurance that I can offer to my clients on death row.

The lethal cocktail administered in 37 U.S. states and by the federal government to prisoners condemned to death typically does include potassium chloride, despite years of criticism. This drug is preceded by an anaesthetic and then a drug that paralyzes the prisoner's muscles. I suspect this is done more to make society feel better rather than the prisoner. They used to cover the face of the electric chair's victim with a leather mask, and strap him in so tightly that he could not writhe - not for the benefit of the prisoner, but for the witnesses. With lethal injection, if the prisoner did not feel pain, there would be little point paralyzing him, which begs a very troubling question.

Surely the world's most "civilized" nation, which promotes its "compassionate conservatism," would ensure that the anaesthetic was sufficient? Well, actually, no, it doesn't. Death penalty lawyers have been systematically challenging the use of lethal injection recently, as the U.S. has failed to come up with a "kinder, gentler" way to kill people. Human Rights Watch reports that in fact prisons do not permit anyone to monitor whether the anaesthetic has been effectively administered during an execution. Anaesthesia is a complex science, affected by the condemned prisoner's weight, his history of intravenous drug use, the blocking ability of the paralyzing agent, and many other factors. Once again, the vets are doing a better job here, as guidelines require any veterinarian to do a hands-on check of the depth of anaesthesia before any painful procedure is commenced.

Lethal injection was invented 30 years ago, with no research (volunteer for a drug trial, anyone?), and has not been adapted since. A massive dose of barbiturates would be an alternative, and likely painless. However this has been rejected in the U.S. as the execution audience -- typically consisting of representatives of the state, a defense lawyer and the victim's family -- would have to wait 30 minutes to know the prisoner was dead.

However, they might want to re-examine their position, since there have been a series of botched and lengthy executions under the current regime. Steven Morin's executioners took 45 minutes to find a vein. The needle inserted in Raymond Landry's arm popped out a couple of minutes after the drugs had started to flow and it took officials fourteen minutes to get it back in, for a total execution time of 40 minutes. Ricky Ray Rector spent 50 minutes moaning behind a curtain while five execution team members worked on both his arms to find a vein that would accept a needle. A total of 36 botched executions have been reported, with prisoners weeping and moaning, technicians eventually inserting needles in the prisoner's neck or foot, drug flow stopping half way through, or the prisoner convulsing and writhing. There are reports of prisoners breathing long after paralysis should have set in under the protocol.

These accounts do not surprise me. I have witnessed death by lethal injection, and the prisoner's suffering is only one of the indignities. At Leslie Martin's execution, the witnesses chattered through the process, and actually cheered when his death was ultimately announced.

Of course, the execution hour is just the culmination of years of mental suffering. One of my clients had his execution stopped at the eleventh hour on four occasions, once less than one minute before the schedule time. And if the actual execution process is cruel, where do you rank saying goodbye to your children over and over again, comforting your mother, listening to discussions on talk-back radio about the pain you deserve to suffer, or simply living in a cell twenty-three and a half hours a day, for two decades?

Another of my clients had his sentence commuted to life after seventeen years on death row. He later told me how odd it felt no longer knowing the form that his death would take. During many years on death row, he knew that he was going to die by electrocution and then, when they changed the method, by lethal injection. But now, with a life sentence, he no longer knew. Would it be lung cancer from his chronic smoking habit? Would it be a shank in his side from a fellow prisoner? Or would he die of old age in the prison hospice, thirty years hence? He didn't know, and that felt strange, and also liberating.

My dog doesn't know how he will die. Actually I don't think he knows much at all. I hope he keels over mid-stride in pursuit of a tennis ball, but if it comes down to it, I will hold him while the drugs sweep him away. And inevitably at that moment I will also be also thinking of many people I have met who will suffer far more in their final hour.