For years (and still today), the main argument was that the death penalty, in whatever form it currently took, was cruel and unusual punishment. That attack takes its current form in the claims that the drugs used for lethal injection don't totally incapacitate the condemned, which is a form of harm.

After being recently rebuffed in that latest argument by the SCOTUS, a new argument emerged, by some members of the Supreme Court itself: waiting too long to die on death row is itself cruel and unusual punishment. Thus, the argument goes, because we subject people to inhumane "torture" by making them wait to die, the death penalty is unconstitutional. That argument has a lot of moving parts and the Supreme Court has thus far refused to address it.

Arkansas had a solution! Let's kill 8 people in 11 days and get this party started. In essence, "Screw waiting. We have the drugs, we have the men, and we have the opportunity. Let's blow and go."

What's the problem with that? According to the left, it will be too traumatic for the executioners and should be stopped.

From the Guardian:

quote:
As commissioner of the department of corrections in Georgia, Ault gave the order for five executions by electric chair in 1994 and 1995. After the fifth life was taken, the cumulative distress reached breaking point and he resigned from the post and moved to a job in the US justice department that had nothing to do with the death penalty.

...

Now those nightmares are back in force, triggered by the knowledge that what Ault considers to be a disaster-in-the-making is about to unfold in Arkansas. Next month, the state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, has scheduled no fewer than eight executions over 11 days – a conveyor belt of killing dispensed at a clip not seen in the US for at least half a century.

...

On Wednesday, 23 former corrections officials from 16 different states sent a joint letter to Hutchinson urging him to reconsider. They warned, several on the basis of personal experience, that participating in executions can exact a “severe toll on corrections officers’ wellbeing” and that by doing so many so quickly Arkansas was “needlessly exacerbating the strain and stress placed on these officers”.

One of Ault’s prime concerns relates not to the eight convicted capital murderers who are set to die, but to the men and women of the execution team who are being asked, just as he was two decades ago, to kill in the name of justice. “To ask corrections officials in Arkansas to kill eight people, two a day – as someone who went through this, I can’t tell you how deeply concerned I am for their mental health,” he said.

...

The psychological impact on execution teams is one of the least discussed aspects of capital punishment in the US, yet arguably one of the most disturbing. There Will Be No Stay, a documentary film released last year, profiles two former majors in South Carolina’s department of corrections Swat team who sued the state for allegedly pressuring them into assisting in multiple executions with minimal training and no counselling (the case was eventually dismissed by a judge).

...

The eight condemned men on Monday lodged a new lawsuit in a federal court in Arkansas seeking to prevent Hutchinson from going ahead with his plan. The complaint warns that the intense stress placed on the execution team, and the lack of a pause between killings to allow for review, will heighten the risk of the inmates suffering unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment as they die.

While I think all of this is utter nonsense, it's one of the main reasons I'm in favor of getting rid of the death penalty. I'm tired of fighting over it.