Why is lethal injection inhumane

Pulmonary edema occurs when the lungs fill up with fluid, and it can induce the feeling of suffocation or drowning. Federal district court ruling. The evidence explains why multiple men have gasped for air after their executions began, NPR reports. Joel Zivet and anatomical pathologist Mark Edgar found pulmonary edema in about three-quarters of more than three dozen autopsy reports they reviewed. In some cases, they also found froth and foam in the airways, which indicates that the person was still alive and trying to breathe as their lungs filled with fluid.

Investigators have found high rates of pulmonary edema in people executed with midazolam, pentobarbital, and sodium thiopental. After the Supreme Court legalized lethal injection, 34 US states execute death row inmates by it. Only the state of Nebraska executes by the electric chair.

Lisa Montgomery did not receive the surgical version of a lethal injection that most states had used so far either in a federal or state execution. Death row inmates are now being commonly used as an experiment of a single shot lethal injection. Ohio is the first state in the US to adopt the single injection after a drug manufacturing company announced that they are not going to produce sodium Thiopenthalin. Research shows that it is the first chemical that used to be injected to paralyze the inmate.

Then the second drug Pancuronium bromide Pavulin was used for immobilizing the inmate. Finally, a lethal dose of potassium chloride would paralyze the heart muscle and the inmate would die from cardiac arrest. However, the single drug lethal injection approach for capital punishment was met with a lot of debate. Both sides of the spectrum have been arguing all the pros and cons ever since this drug was given to death row inmates.

Some states had been delaying their executions now and looking for other feasible substitutes. But the death penalty supporters have no qualms about this single drug approach, because according to them it is full-proof. Their argument is that an inmate with a three drug method may be paralyzed, but can still be conscious. After that, there had been legal ramifications which culminated in further delay of some of the executions.

The manufacturer of Pentobarbital is a Danish company. They initially said they had no idea how this drug was used in the United States. Since the Ohio execution they had moved their US plant to Italy.

They were supposed to be monitoring future shipments to the United States. In its rush to execute its death row inmates, Ohio had acted too quickly in administering Pentobarbital. As soon as the jury comes out with the verdict to die, the state wants to move very quickly to carry out the execution.

But the appeals process to stop the execution sometimes takes years in both federal and state cases. Once someone gets the death penalty, that person is considered gone. They are kept isolated from the rest of the prison population. Usually, twice a week, they are escorted to the prison yard where they can walk or play basketball.

Sometimes they are allowed in the day room where they can watch television. The family members visit them from behind shattered proof glass windows and gradually the visits start to sever. Friends abandon them. The correctional facilities try to execute them as quickly as possible. The opponents of death penalty law do have a different view. They have been vehemently objecting to the fact that because of drug shortages, using Pentobarbital to kill an inmate just like an animal is inhumane.

There has not been much study done on the single-shot drug, and too little is known about how this drug works on a person, according to researchers. What can be more fitting as a punishment? The debate over crime and punishment is an ongoing issue. The debate will be continuing over the role of past trauma in criminal sentencing. The death penalty opponents will say execution does not really deter crime.

In all the states where they have capital punishment—there are pedophiles and murderers killing people every day. Death penalty is sought because of a desire for retribution. It is a form of punishment that can also potentially kill an innocent person. An execution only serves as a quick relief. Moral arguments for the death penalty put quite simply, is the concept of retribution, where the killing of one person justifies the death of the killer.

However, opponents of this notion would counteract that point with the fact that issuing capital punishment detracts from the moral message it conveys, alongside the fact that it is fundamentally inhumane. Despite these arguments, the inhumane action that is the death penalty cannot go unchecked.

With the death of Dennis McGuire, for instance, these processes are not clean and fraught with mistakes leading to the disgusting and horrific death of inmates. Skip to content. What exactly is capital punishment? Notable forms of Capital Punishment throughout History and Today The Guillotine The Guillotine, one of the older methods of execution, was introduced in France in Hanging Carried out in countries in Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, hanging is defined as suspending someone in the air as a form of execution.

Lethal Injection Lethal Injection consists of an anesthetic alongside chemicals used to paralyze the prisoner and stop the heart.