Ohio designs single-drug execution

[Bill McBlueState]

Source: Toledo Blade

COLUMBUS - Ohio yesterday announced it will become the first state in the nation to switch to a one-drug method of execution, essentially administering a massive barbiturate overdose.

The state also will employ a back-up of injecting drugs directly into a muscle when prison medical technicians can't find useable veins, such as occurred Sept. 15 in the failed execution of Romell Broom.

Broom's execution team struggled unsuccessfully for two hours to insert intravenous shunts into his arms to administer three drugs, prompting Gov. Ted Strickland to take the unprecedented step of stopping an execution.

Read more: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...

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What a proud day for the Buckeye State. Leading the way as always.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I saw it in today's LA Times too...

Someone was bound to think of this...

[saigon68]

27. Maybe a Little Zyklon B in a gas chamber

Would titillate the death penalty advocates in this pest hole

</sarcasm>

[notadmblnd]

2. sounds like some sadists are running that state.

[quakerboy]

15. How so?

This seems an improvement over the wacky 3 drug system. Isn't what they are changing to essentially what is provided for assisted suicide patients in some states? less drama, less pain, more sensible, if you are going to be killing people anyway?

[bitchkitty]

17. If I were going to kill myself,

that's how I'd do it. It's painless.

[Auggie]

3. .

[earcandle]

4. this is such a primitive ass backwards conversation. executions. give me a break.

[Fearless]

5. Adolf von Baeyer would roll over in his grave.

[leftwing9]

6. This is actually a progressive step. Not that I am happy about it.

Like most on here, I am for the complete banning of the death penalty. But the single-drug injection method is an improvement over what we currently have.

The current method of lethal injection involves three drugs: one to anesthetize the victim, one to paralyze him, and one to kill, in that order. Occasionally, the first drug will fail, meaning that the victim actually feels the third drug stopping his heart. Of course, observers notice nothing, because the second drug prevents the victim from moving.

This new method uses a drug that is used in assisted suicides in Europe. In other words, it's probably about the least painful way to go.

I want to reiterate, of course, that I'm against the death penalty. The obviously sensible solution is no more executions of any type. But this move by Ohio represents a small step forward, not backward.

[Desertrose]

10. I agree with you - on both parts.

It certainly seems kinder than the 3 step method. (Ugh. Pretty barbaric when you think about it.)


As for the death penalty...if it is wrong to kill another person, then why is killing someone not wrong just because a group of people (judge, jury, manmade "laws") determine it's OK.

[paulsby]

20. false premise

it's not wrong (under the law) to kill another person

it's only wrong (iow illegal) if it is not a justifiable or excusable homicide.

you can disagree, as a matter of policy, that the death penalty is justified.

but to say it's illegal to kill another person ignores the reality that it often isn't

[northzax]

30. You're confusing the words 'illegal' and 'wrong'

Judicial executions may well be legal, and therefore not murder, but it doesn't neccesarily follow that what's legal is also not wrong.

[SoCalDem]

24. A person I knew once who worked at a prison told me that

the 3-drug thing was so that three people each controlled the "switch-button-whatever" for one drug, and therefore no "one" person killed the inmate.. Kind of like the firing squad..no one knows which bullet actually did the deed.

[uppityperson]

13. If the executee can't move or let them know, how do they know he can feel it?

Curious here.

[leftwing9]

22. Read the "Awareness" and "Research" subsections under "Against" in this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection

I'm not a huge fan of quoting Wikipedia, but the citations are not the best.

Basically, doctors cannot perform lethal injections because they violate the hippocratic oath. Therefore, less-trained medical personnel have to inject the sodium thiopental. There is also no consensus on an appropriate dose to administer.

In 2005, researchers at the University of Miami found that the thiopental levels in 43 of 49 execution victims were lower than the amount required for surgery. 21 of 49 had thiopental levels consistent with awareness.

Again, having the death penalty at all is barbaric, but I think Ohio took a step forward here.

[FarCenter]

7. Can't they just get some Euthasol from the local veterinarian?

pentobarbital sodium and phenytoin sodium

It's the blue juice.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. This makes me so proud to be an American!

[laconicsax]

18. You and me both!

[Hubert Flottz]

9. The more things change the more things stay the same...

Phenol

Snip

Second World War

Injections of phenol have occasionally been used as a means of rapid execution. In particular, phenol was used as a means of extermination by the Nazis before and during the Second World War. Originally used by the Nazis in the 1930s as part of its euthanasia program, phenol, cheap and easy to make and quickly effective, became the injectable toxin of choice through the last days of the War. Although Zyklon-B pellets, invented by Gerhard Lenz were used in the gas chambers to exterminate large groups of people, the Nazis learned that extermination of smaller groups was more economical via injection of each victim one at a time with phenol instead. Phenol injections were given to thousands of people in concentration camps, especially at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately one gram is enough to cause death. Injections were administered by medical doctors, their assistants, or sometimes prisoner doctors; such injections were originally given intravenously, more commonly in the arm, but injection directly into the heart, so as to induce nearly instant death, was later preferred.<13> One of the best known inmates to be executed with carbolic acid injection in Auschwitz was St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest who volunteered to undergo three weeks of starvation and dehydration in the place of another inmate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol

Hell, next they'll be putting rat poison in the last meal...

[MidwestTransplant]

11. They must be so proud. They should put that on the welcome sign for when you cross the border into

OH

[Downwinder]

12. Does it come in tablet form?

[irislake]

14. Wonderful news!

[lib2DaBone]

16. This is wonderful news... Ohio will save $5 on each execution.

What is Ohio doing for Job creation? ... not that they need jobs in Ohio?

Who says politicians are not responsive to the needs of people?

How many bodies have they dug up so far from that guys house in Cleveland... 12... 13? Oh never mind...

[XemaSab]

19. I'm against the death penalty

That being said, why not make heroin freely available on death row?

[Endangered Specie]

21. I have a much better single-drug idea in mind...

230 grains of copper jacketed lead...

adminstered at 800 feet per second.

[midnight armadillo]

23. But that would be messy

Wouldn't want to upset the onlookers, you know, or make people think the proceedings were somehow less than civilized.

[Lorien]

25. Americans do love to kill people

They love crime, violence, and most of all: punishment. Nothing gets authoritarian Americans off more that the notion of killing a "bad guy". The ironic part is that the States with death penalties have a higher rate of violent crime than those without. Doesn't matter though; it works for politicians to please their constituents with killing.

[tomm2thumbs]

26. gives the term 'designer drugs' a new meaning

[David Zephyr]

28. Barbaric.

.

[Pavulon]

29. If you fuck up in japan, they hang you.

getting put to sleep like a dog is pretty painless. Personally I think the worst should be locked in supermax and never see the sun or hear a human voice again. Let them climb the walls.

[northzax]

31. Hanging, if done right

Is actually as painless and fast as anything else. Snap someone's neck and dislocate it and they're dead instantly. Of course, hanging done badly is long, drawn out and basically strangling someone slowly. Of course, that struggle is the thing people want to see, which is why traditionally the well-connected were able to secure the much more efficient beheading (of course, when that goes wrong, it's really messy)