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| Feeling the pain |
| By Sarah Etter, News Reporter |
| Published: 04/30/2007 |
Lethal injection has been at the center of heated debates, execution appeals and numerous lawsuits for corrections departments across the country. Last week, a new report in the online medical journal PLoS Medicine suggested that the lethal injection process is flawed because inmates are awake, suffocating and possibly feeling pain as they are being executed. During the lethal injection process, potassium chloride, the barbiturate thiopental, and a neuromuscular blocker known as pancuronium bromide are usually combined to produce anesthesia and then bring on respiratory and cardiac arrest. Researchers from the University of Miami examined the effectiveness of these drugs information by looking at executions from North Carolina and California along with published data on veterinary animal experiences. Their results, published in, Lethal Injection for Execution: Chemical Asphyxiation?, revealed that thiopental may not be fatal and might be insufficient to induce surgical anesthesia for the duration of the execution. Based on evidence from North Carolina, California, and Virginia, the researchers also found that potassium chloride in lethal injection does not reliably induce cardiac arrest. Currently, 37 states use lethal injection, but 11 have suspended the practice until courts can review offender appeals. “Most of the deaths were taking quite a bit longer than they should have. None were particularly bad, but they all showed that the protocol wasn't correct,” says study co-author Dr. Richard Weisman. “Once we saw that the time of death was sometimes so long after they started the execution process, we knew something was wrong. If the injected doses, particularly the barbiturate doses, are inadequate or administered incorrectly, there will be suffering.” Researchers reviewed staff testimonies, records about drug procurement, and eyewitness testimony, and concluded that the executed may experience suffocation even if lethal injection is administered without technical error. “Our findings suggest that current lethal injection protocols may not reliably effect death through the mechanisms intended, indicating a failure of design and implementation. If thiopental and potassium chloride fail to cause anesthesia and cardiac arrest, potentially aware inmates could die through pancuronium-induced asphyxiation. Thus the conventional view of lethal injection leading to an invariably peaceful and painless death is questionable,” therefore might make lethal injection protocols a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. One argument in the report compares the standards for putting animals to sleep to those used to execute offenders. “In stark contrast to animal euthanasia, lethal injection for judicial execution was designed and implemented with no clinical or basic research whatsoever. To our knowledge, no ethical or oversight groups have ever evaluated the protocols and outcomes in lethal injection,” the report says. “Furthermore, there are no published clinical or experimental data regarding the safety and efficacy of the three-drug lethal injection protocolÂ…[and] no monitoring for anesthesia was performed.” Although missteps by those charged with completing the execution have been blamed for the pain death row inmates feel, medical professionals are barred by oath from participating in the procedure. This has led some experts to suggest alternative methods to the death penalty. Weisman, however, has another opinion. “Lethal injection can be done painlessly. But the drugs being used, doses, qualifications for staff and training on the procedure must be reviewed. There has to be some science put into it so prisoners are not suffering inhumanly,” he says. Related resources: PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science The future of lethal injection, 5/22/06 |
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