From the hangman whose rope snaps to paramedics who can’t find a vein for a lethal injection, death penalty executions in the United States have sometimes been sorry affairs.
To the end of the 19th century executions were largely carried out by hanging. When done properly the condemned falls and snaps his neck, dying instantly. But according to press reports of the time, ropes sometimes broke, sending the condemned person tumbling to the ground. Other times the fall was so violent that the condemned person was decapitated.
Worse, if the prisoner was not weighted down properly, the noose would tighten but not snap his neck. The victim dangled in the air for as long as it took him to die from strangulation.
The electric chair has been equally problematic. The condemned prisoner is strapped into the chair, one electrode attached to the head and the second to the leg, providing a full circuit. A jolt of 2 000 volts in theory makes the victim unconscious. The second jolt of electricity then destroys internal organs.
The victim’s hands contract, legs twitch violently, and there is sometimes nose bleeding, urination and vomiting. Then there is the stench of burned flesh.
The gas chamber, which came into use in 1924 and is used in several US states, offers the spectacle of a condemned person strapped to a chair gasping for air, with bulging red eyes and writhing in what seems to be terrible suffering as he gasps for air.
Lethal injections, first used in 1982, was supposed to limit this suffering. It has been used in more than 80% of executions since then.
The condemned is strapped to a wheeled stretcher and injected with anesthetic sodium pentothal. The prisoner, now unconscious, is injected with pancuronium bromide, which paralyses muscles including the lungs and diaphragm. Then a shot of potassium chloride brings swift cardiac arrest — or so it should work.
The sodium pentothal doesn’t always work on schedule, and despite being paralysed and presumably unconscious some condemned prisoners who get the final shot violently writhe on the execution table, shaking with spasms.
Furthermore, penitentiary paramedics are not properly trained to correctly administer lethal injections in problem subjects, especially when dealing with former drug addicts with damaged veins.
”They butchered me back there!” cried said Bennie Demps as he was being executed in Florida in 2000.
On May 2 2006 Joseph Clark had a similar experience during his execution in Ohio. ”It don’t work!” he howled, as prison workers poked around his arm searching for a vein to inject the sedative. The curtain was drawn, but witnesses could still hear him cry and groan while the executioners poked around for another vein. – AFP
