Thread: DP ? - is lethal injection inhumane ?

Originally Posted by SLance68

I would be glad to do away with lethal injections, electric chair & all other methods of "legal" death penalties if we could just kill them off they way they killed their victims. Sorry but I do not believe that they have more rights than the people they harmed/killed/maimed. JMHO

I agree to!!!!

Supreme Court upholds use of lethal injections
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 40 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court upheld the most common method of lethal injections executions Wednesday, clearing the way for states to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months.

The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.

The governor of Virginia lifted his state's moratorium on executions two hours after the high court issued its ruling.

"We ... agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment," Chief Justice John Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other justices, however, agreed with the outcome.

Roberts' opinion did leave open subsequent challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

Executions have been on hold since September, when the court agreed to hear the Kentucky case. There was no immediate indication when they would resume, but prosecutors in several states said they would seek new execution dates if the court ruled favorably in the Kentucky case.

Forty-two people were executed last year among more than 3,300 people on death row across the country. Another roughly two dozen executions did not go forward because of the Supreme Court's review, death penalty opponents said.

The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anesthetic does not take hold, the other two drugs can cause excruciating pain. One of those drugs, a paralytic, would render the prisoner unable to express his discomfort.

The case before the court came from Kentucky, where two death row inmates did not ask to be spared execution or death by injection. Instead, they wanted the court to order a switch to a single drug, a barbiturate, that causes no pain and can be given in a large enough dose to cause death.

At the very least, they said, the state should be required to impose tighter controls on the three-drug process to ensure that the anesthetic is given properly.

Roberts said the one-drug method, frequently used in animal euthanasia, "has problems of its own, and has never been tried by a single state."

Kentucky has had only one execution by lethal injection and it did not present any obvious problems, both sides in the case agreed.

But executions elsewhere, in Florida and Ohio, took much longer than usual, with strong indications that the prisoners suffered severe pain in the process. Workers had trouble inserting the IV lines that are used to deliver the drugs.

Roberts said "a condemned prisoner cannot successfully challenge a state's method of execution merely by showing a slightly or marginally safer alternative."

Ginsburg, in her dissent, said her colleagues should have asked Kentucky courts to consider whether the state includes adequate safeguards to ensure a prisoner is unconscious and thus unlikely to suffer severe pain.

Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the outcome, said the court's decision would not end the debate over lethal injection. "I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol, and specifically about the justification for the use of the paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, but also about the justification for the death penalty itself," Stevens said.

Stevens suggested that states could spare themselves legal costs and delays in executions by eliminating the use of the paralytic.

Ty Alper, a death penalty opponent and associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said he expects challenges to lethal injections will continue in several states.

The Rev. Pat Delahanty, head of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the ruling wasn't a surprise.

"We never expected it to do more than maybe slow down executions in Kentucky or elsewhere," Delahanty said. "We're going to be facing some executions soon."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080416/...m.E5vXy_5H2ocA

I think that I have said this before, but I believe the sentences should get stiffer everytime someone commits a crime. Not everyone who is in the system knew the extent of what they were getting into. They may have known it was wrong, (Which in a perfect world would be enough to stop them from what they are doing) But not how stiff the penalties would be. But thats a whole other debate. But for repeat offenders the penalties should get worse. For example if someone forges a check and the sentence is 6 months, then they do the 6 months. They do it again, double it. Third time? Triple it and so forth. That gives a chance to see what the person is about. The first 6 months is a learning experience, and if they learn from that and move on in life, Great. But if they make the same mistakes again, make them pay twice as much. As for the programs offered to prisoners, why are they offered? I am all for rehabilitating someone who wants to be rehabilitated. But if a person has been in prison many times, then obviosly they aren't intersted and are just doing it to waste tax payers money. Those programs should be limited to first time offenders, non violent offenders. I also think that every inmate should have to work in some capacity. Why do they get to lay back and eat 3 meals a day when most of us out here have to work to have those things? The medical part is a little tricky. I don't want to be cruel to anyone. Maybe some kind of approach for that dealing with level of offense, and priors? Also sentence legnth? And if someone is on deathrow then why is this person getting medical treatment at all? If they are sentenced to die anyway, then why give them meds to keep them healthy? Seems like withholding treatment for them would save money in multiple ways. The cost of the doctor, the meds, the execution, and the meals saved by this person dying sooner rather than waiting through years of red tape. I do like the idea of killing someone in the same horrible way they killed their victim, as long as it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are guilty. I would feel horrible if some guy was a convicted killer, and was killed in a brutal way, only to find out later that there was a mistake somewhere and he didn't do it.

For those who are against the Death Penalty - do cases such as http://www.bigbigforums.com/vent-whi...ttle-girl.html have any bearing on your views ?

I am all for the death penalty.
These morons scream "inhumane" but, what about the
people they murdered? Did they get a choice on how they
were going to die? Hell NO!
I say give the victims families a shotgun and let them have
at it.