No humanity in capital punishment process

In the hours preceding an execution, the San Quentin California State Prison offers its doomed prisoner every measure of lukewarm comfort. The inmate is provided with Valium (optional), clean clothes and slippers (mandatory), access to radio and television and, of course, as extravagant a last meal as $50 can buy.

At midnight, he or she is ushered into the execution chamber, strapped on a gurney and given alcohol swabs to prevent an infection that would never affect the inmate.

The warden gives the signal, the three-drug cocktail is administered, and somewhere between three minutes and half an hour, the inmate's heart finally gives out.

This is the ostensible beauty of lethal injection: quick, painless and, most importantly, easy for the onlookers.

The needle has often been lauded as the humane alternative to capital punishment; there is no cringe-inducing crack of the neck, no smell of seared flesh, no shots fired.

Recent challenges to the alleged painlessness of this mode of killing, however, have brought capital punishment to a standstill in California.

In February 2006, Michael Morales, a San Quentin inmate convicted of rape and murder, was granted a last-minute stay of execution after filing a suit attacking the constitutionality of lethal injection.

Since then, all executions in the Golden State have been placed on an indefinite moratorium, barring the resolution of the case.

This, and many other lawsuits around the nation, have brought into perspective the flaws inherent in our current system of capital punishment, mainly, that the boasted humaneness of the procedure applies more to the witnesses rather than the prisoners.

The lethal concoction of drugs does an expert job of keeping the ghastliness of what occurs far away from the innocent eyes of the bystanders.

Like the 37 other states that employ the death penalty, California uses a standard combination of three drugs to sedate, paralyze and, of course, murder, its prisoners.

First, the inmate is given a large dose of sodium thiopental, which acts as a general anesthetic; second, pancuronium bromide is administered, which relaxes the muscles and paralyzes the lungs, eventually stopping respiration.

The final blow comes in the form of potassium chloride, which essentially stops the heart.

Conveniently enough, the same drug that stops breathing also immobilizes facial muscles, rendering it impossible for the condemned to betray the writhing pain inevitably caused by each organ shutting down, one by one.

The process is not necessarily as expedient as it is made out to be.

Cases have shown that some inmates live up to 30 minutes before being pronounced dead; one convict in a Florida State Prison lived 34 minutes, and even required a 2nd dose before his heart stopped.

With no easy solution in sight, Morales' case won't be addressed until January at the earliest, when the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on similar allegations of unconstitutionality in Kentucky.

California is not the only state seriously reviewing the death penalty, and though several temporary solutions have already been posed, (e.g. increasing the amount of anesthetic administered), recent lawsuits suggest a more sweeping reform will be necessary.

After all, it is only in keeping with its own pattern that the American judicial system continues to cycle through methods of humanizing killing.

From hanging, to the firing squad and the electric chair, and, more recently, the gas chamber, the United States is in a constant search for the perfect method of guiltless retribution - anything to make us forget the most cruel and unusual punishment of all is death itself.

We can continue to look, try new methods of murder, perpetuate a culture of killing - or we can realize there is no such thing as a humane murder.

Univ. Southern Calif. Daily Trojan - November, 28 2007

Source : NCADP