re: Serious question about execution by lethal injection

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My cousin was married to a guy who went in to inspect a pressure vessel that hadn't been purged of argon. He was gone in about 15 seconds.

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One reason why we use drones now

Partly because the companies that make the drug that puts you to sleep does not want to sell their drugs to the prisons. They usually have to buy the drugs from other countries. There’s been plenty of botched deaths. Lot of times they can’t find veins. Or the dosage can be ineffective. Lot of things can go wrong. You name it. Electrocutions and gas have also malfunctioned.

My opinion is that to make sure it’s not screwed up, if they botch it and it doesn’t work, the inmate goes free.

There is no way it should be ok to attempt to kill an inmate and fail at it by lethal injection and then say oh well, we will just try to kill you again at a later date

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their oath

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Means nothing, it's ceremonial. The Hippocratic Oath is not binding in any way.

I agree. Bring back hanging.

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Why would there be any pain at all?

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This is what I was taught in nursing school. There's something called Cardiac Action Potential. It's most simplest explanation goes like this:

Imagine if very cell in your heart is a house on a street and it has two roommates Calcium & Potassium. But the roommates are never home at the same time. When Calcium is coming down the street (the blood stream), Potassium is waiting at the door and when Calcium comes inside the house (the cell), Potassium immediately goes outside into the street (blood stream). And vice versa. When Calcium is inside, he is waiting for Potassium to come home, and they immediately exchange places. Every time Calcium & Potassium switch places, your heart muscle cells contract. So every time your heart beats, that's the exchange of Potassium & Calcium. (Sodium is involved, too but I'm making this simple.)

So for lethal injection, they would give an injection of Potassium Chloride. So now, imagine if Potassium is in the house, waiting for Calcium to come home, but out in the street is nothing but Potassium. The switch never happens. The heart never beats. Effectively, you are inducing cardiac arrest (a heart attack).

Is it painful? Normally, I would think a heart attack/cardiac arrest would be, as the heart never pumps, so oxygen is never delivered to the rest of the cells in your heart (brain & body) and the cells (& person) die. However, as a hospice nurse, I've seen many patients with kidney failure that are no longer taking dialysis to balance the levels of potassium/calcium/sodium, and they all appear to pass peacefully, with no grimacing/moaning/furrowed brow/etc. But since I'm not a death row inmate or in kidney failure, I don't actually know if there is pain at the moment of death, but potentially, it could be.

Because of soft, bleeding heart liberals, that is why.

Why aren't we using fentanyl for this? It's a no brainer.

The lethal injection protocol varies from state to state. In the past, three drugs were used. Sodium pentothal was used to put the prisoner to sleep. Pancuronium bromide caused muscle paralysis and respiratory arrest. Potassium chloride stopped the heart. The access to lethal injection drugs became an issue when the European manufacturers refused to ship the drugs to the United States to be used in executions. Midazolam, used in place of sodium pentothal, is not believed to be as effective and is sometimes not administered correctly.

Some people believe taking a life is wrong no matter what. I disagree.
There are indeed people who commit such evil they should be removed from this earth forever.
We now live in the age of DNA- which removes any doubt in the vast majority of crimes.

The appeals system is far too lenient on the real monsters using it to stay alive.