by: Kimeta Grant Published 11/22/2019 7:53 am

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

— Winston Churchill

Introduction

Currently, in the United States there are 30 state that have legalized the death penalty or capital punishment. If someone is convicted of the death penalty, then they are sentenced to an execution or put to death. This is a very controversial topic; opposer of the death penalty think that it is morally wrong. Supports of the penalty believe that lethal injection, death by the injection of chemicals into the body, is a better method for execution because it is supposed to painless and quick.

 However, what if this idea was incorrect, and the lethal injection was just as painful as the electric chair. In the article, Lethal Injection for Execution: Chemical Asphyxiation by Teresa Zimmers, there is a main argument that the use of lethal injections for execution actually leads to a peaceful and painless death in comparison to previous methods such as electrocution or cyanide gas.

Why is this even an argument?

Well, the article first explains that current executions by lethal injection is thought to lead to a painless death, but the truth is it can be very painful. The current protocols for lethal injections stem from at two doctors, a medical examiner and anesthesiology, in Oklahoma.

The drugs used were Barbiturate Thiopental, Pancuronium Bromide and Potassium Chloride; the doctors concluded that alone the drugs were lethal, but it was intended that the combinations of the drugs would produce anesthesia (the state of loss of sensation and awareness for medical purposes) and then death, which would cause to respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. Some believe that the current uses of these drugs are not resulting in death in the manner that was originally intended.

What Did Zimmers and Her Team Do?

Zimmers and his crew of researchers looked at physical reports from the department of corrections in each state. These reports also included time of death, official statements, news, and eyewitness statements. Only 33 of the executions had start times available, but only 19 could be independently confirmed. They also noted how the North Carolina warden pronounced someone as dead, the warden called death when a flat line was displayed on the electrocardiogram monitor (a machine that reads the electric signals of the heart) for five minutes.

The flat line on the electrocardiogram monitor indicates that the heart is no longer beating, there is no pulse meaning the patient is dead. Information on executions were released from North Carolina and California, two states in the United States, suggested that these Thiopental not only not fatal, but they are insufficient to induce anesthesia for the time of execution. Other states, North Carolina and Virginia, indicated that potassium chloride is not reliably to induce cardiac arrest.

Why Do Should We Care?

In the United States and Europe, euthanasia for laboratory or clinical applications requires regulatory oversight in order to minimize pain to the animals. Lethal injection of animals can only be used by qualified personnel of certain clinically tested Food and Drug Administration-approved anesthetics or euthanasia. Yet, lethal injections for judicial execution was not implemented in a clinical experiment or with basic research. There are no published experimental or clinical data that reference the efficacy or safety of these drugs.

Therefor, it is concerning to know that the drug administered to these individuals have never been tested for accuracy. While the rest of the world believes that lethal injections are the most moral way to executions, people who are on the receiving end of these drug spend their last minutes of life in pain and suffering.

Will Method of Lethal Injection Change?

As officials continue to find that the lethal injection protocols have flaws some states have suspended these methods for the death penalty, while other states have fully suspended the death penalty. There are also other method of execution including electrocution. Ideally there should be more research done on the types of drugs that have been legalized for lethal injections. All executions should be monitored and record with accurate detail, so that if research need to be done there will not be a hassle trying to trace information over the years.

In 2014 President Obama had directed the Justice Department board to review the protocols for capital punishments and the problems surrounding lethal injection drugs. While many Democrats oppose the death penalty, the current president, Donald Trump, voiced that capital punishment is appropriate for very serious crimes. Most recently, a federal judge temporarily halted the first federal execution in 16 years in order to ensure that the punishment was carried out lawfully. This shows that lethal injections, death penalty, and executions are still sore topics to discuss in America, but to avoid these discussions leads to error in the way that they are used. Discussion is needed to help stimulate the minds of other and to bring awareness to the problems within the justice system.

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