Apr 24 2007
The authors of a new study are suggesting that executions carried out by lethal injections possibly cause death by asphyxiation, and the prisoners being executed may be conscious and may experience pain.
The medical review of dozens of executions has concluded that the drugs used to execute prisoners in the United States sometimes fail to work causing slow and painful deaths that probably violate constitutional bans on cruel and unusual punishment.
Researcher Leonidas Koniaris from the University of Miami and colleagues examined data from North Carolina and California along with some information from Florida and Virginia on deaths by lethal injection.
They analyzed details released on 40 prisoners in North Carolina since 1984 and another dozen in California, such as the dose the inmates received, their weight and the time they needed to die; they found the average death time was 10 to 14 minutes.
They concluded that the typical "one-size-fits-all" doses of anesthetic do not consider an inmate's weight and other key factors; some received too little, and in some cases, the anesthetic wore off before the execution was completed.
It is reported that at least one California inmate required a second dose, and additional doses were used in two other executions there.
Amnesty International says in 2005 world wide, 22 countries killed at least 2,148 people by lethal injection; of the 53 executions carried out in the United States in 2006, 52 were by lethal injection.
Lethal injections are currently used for execution in the U.S. and China and have been adopted by 37 states as a cheaper and more humane alternative to electrocution, gas chambers and other execution methods.
But the method has been suspended in 11 states after opponents alleged it is ineffective and cruel.
The issue reached a critical stage last year in California, when a federal judge ordered that doctors assist in killing Michael Morales, convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl; the doctors refused, and legal arguments in the case have gone on since.
Medical ethics ban doctors and other health professionals from taking part in executions.
The authors say the current cocktail constituting a lethal injection is based on one drawn up by legislators in Oklahoma, and appears to have been based on personal opinion rather than independent research.
They say there is no scientific evidence which has been validated that lethal injection is humane.
The drugs used are the barbiturate, thiopental (which acts as an anesthetic, but does not have any analgesic effect), a neuromuscular blocker, pancuronium bromide (which causes muscle paralysis); and an electrolyte, potassium chloride (which stops the heart from beating).
Each of these drugs on its own was apparently thought to be sufficient to cause death; the combination was intended to produce anesthesia then death due to respiratory and cardiac arrest.
However this study shows that currently administered do not always work as intended, some prisoners take many minutes to die, and others become very distressed.
The scientists say even when administered properly, the three-drug lethal injection method appears to have caused some inmates to suffocate while they were conscious and unable to move, instead of having their hearts stopped while they were sedated.
The authors concluded that in the current regimen thiopental might not be fatal and might even be insufficient to induce surgical anesthesia for the duration of the execution, and that the doses of potassium chloride used did not reliably induce cardiac arrest.
The journal's editors have called for the abolishment of the death penalty, saying there is no humane way of forcibly killing someone.
They sent the manuscript to three independent medical experts for review, an anesthesiologist, a forensic pathologist, someone in charge of a critical care unit, and a lawyer, and say they were satisfied with the science.
The report is published this week in PLoS Medicine.
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