SCOTUS ruling - Death Penalty Drugs

[cabri]

Supreme Court says Okla. lethal injection doesn't violate Constitution

Justices uphold use of drug implicated in botched executions

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court upheld the use of a controversial drug in lethal injection executions Monday, as two dissenting justices said for the first time that they think it's "highly likely" that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional.

The justices voted 5-4 in a case from Oklahoma that the sedative midazolam can be used in executions without violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Either the article is confusing or there is a mix of conservative/liberal on this ruling.

 

[Slew Foot]

As an anesthesiologist, midazolam is quite possibly the LEAST cruel drug you could guve someone.

 

[Pneumothorax]

The drug isn't the main culprit, but the stupid idiots putting in the IV access. They need to hire an ER RN to put the death needles in. God knows how many fatties and heroin addicts they've had to deal with. They should just put a central line in these bastards.

 

[TheSlamma]

The drug isn't the main culprit, but the stupid idiots putting in the IV access. They need to hire an ER RN to put the death needles in. God knows how many fatties and heroin addicts they've had to deal with. They should just put a central line in these bastards.

That sounds EXPENSIVE!

 

[Anubis]

I've always been curious as to why there needed to be some special "death penalty drug"

pretty much ANY of the high power opiates and sedatives will work. Shit you could just give them a bunch of potassium and they would be dead in a matter of seconds

 

[TheSlamma]

I've always been curious as to why there needed to be some special "death penalty drug"

pretty much ANY of the high power opiates and sedatives will work. Shit you could just give them a bunch of potassium and they would be dead in a matter of seconds

We need to give them the special care they have earned.

 

[Slew Foot]

The drug isn't the main culprit, but the stupid idiots putting in the IV access. They need to hire an ER RN to put the death needles in. God knows how many fatties and heroin addicts they've had to deal with. They should just put a central line in these bastards.

From reading some artcles this seems to be the main culprit, the IVs always infiltrate. Just stick in some IM succinylcholine and ketamine and call it a day. Sure theyll defasiculate for a minute, but theyll be happy.

 

[Moonbeam]

"We will kill you if you kill." Not there's a message from the blindest of the blind.

 

[cubby1223]

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "Under the court's new rule, it would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead to have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake."

This is the type of comparative argument we find on this forum.

It should not be the type of argument made in the Supreme Court!!! She's saying because of this ruling, burning at the stake is acceptable *sigh*

Sometimes I hate this world... There you go Moonbeam, analyze the hate!

 

[cubby1223]

I suppose it's just a side effect of growing older and realizing more that the Supreme Court really is there to create new law, basically be a second legislative branch when the normal legislative branch doesn't produce the laws your party wants.

 

[soulcougher73]

"We will kill you if you kill." Not there's a message from the blindest of the blind.

It's called justice for heinous crimes. This kind of justice is reactive.

 

[etrigan420]

Versed (midazolam) is an awesome drug, and has the added bonus of impairing memory, so most of these guys wont even remember the procedure...

I'm not sure what the complaint is.

 

[FerrelGeek]

The wise Latina strikes (out) again.

This is the type of comparative argument we find on this forum.

It should not be the type of argument made in the Supreme Court!!! She's saying because of this ruling, burning at the stake is acceptable *sigh*

Sometimes I hate this world... There you go Moonbeam, analyze the hate!

 

[cubby1223]

On the subject of killing another person for the benefit of society, remember President Obama's own words on an execution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYmK19-d0U

"His demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity."

The world isn't full of all rainbows and unicorns and happy things, there is a dirty part to the world that will always be there and always needs cleaning, and the death penalty, in my opinion, is a necessary tool. It's just a shame it's been abused too much over the years.

 

[Moonbeam]

This is the type of comparative argument we find on this forum.

It should not be the type of argument made in the Supreme Court!!! She's saying because of this ruling, burning at the stake is acceptable *sigh*

Sometimes I hate this world... There you go Moonbeam, analyze the hate!

Dear cubby. You are a good person and your sense of what is good was violated by what you think you see in the comments of Sotomayor. She has aroused within you a sense of moral outrage. Moral outrage is the natural reaction that good people have when real morality is violated but not when the violation is only of ones inculcated and accepted moral foundations. You are a good person but you have not looked deep into yourself to find a bedrock proof on which you can establish the truth of your morality and in fact there isn't any. If you were to be impartial in your analysis you would see that there is no such thing as formulated morality. Real morality is the action of a loving being who is present in the now. It can't be put into words but even if you are asleep to your being, you know it is there. But there is only love and you know it, so there can be no real hate. You hate because you can't access your true being. But you are not alone in that. We were all programmed violently not to be who we really are.

 

[Moonbeam]

On the subject of killing another person for the benefit of society, remember President Obama's own words on an execution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYmK19-d0U



The world isn't full of all rainbows and unicorns and happy things, there is a dirty part to the world that will always be there and always needs cleaning, and the death penalty, in my opinion, is a necessary tool. It's just a shame it's been abused too much over the years.

Necessary for what reason. You will not be able to answer. Your answer will always be built on unexamined assumptions, a truthiness you are sure adhere to your opinions.

 

[Moonbeam]

It's called justice for heinous crimes. This kind of justice is reactive.

There was a time when people lived in poor societies and had no prisons maintained by the state and could not separate killers from the population. In such cases the death penalty was the only way to insure the safety of other people from the psychologically deranged. We now live in a different world and do not have to kill killers as if that will keep killing people at bay. It just makes us exactly like them, We kill people we deem worthy of death, just like killers do when they kill.

 

[MovingTarget]

This flap over one particular drug is minor in the grand scheme of capital punishment. We have resorted to getting those drugs via the black market as pharma companies do not want to be associated with supporting it. There is even talk now about bringing back the electric chair if it continues to be an issue. Honestly, its time that we stopped kicking the can down the road and eliminated capital punishment altogether. I was hoping SCOTUS would do a repeat of what happened in the 70s and halt the practice. It has no place in civilized society.

 

[Brainonska511]

This flap over one particular drug is minor in the grand scheme of capital punishment. We have resorted to getting those drugs via the black market as pharma companies do not want to be associated with supporting it. There is even talk now about bringing back the electric chair if it continues to be an issue. Honestly, its time that we stopped kicking the can down the road and eliminated capital punishment altogether. I was hoping SCOTUS would do a repeat of what happened in the 70s and halt the practice. It has no place in civilized society.

Drug-induced death penalty is simply trying to cloak an inherently violent government act in the cloak of medicine. It does have no place in a civilized society. We shouldn't relish having acts of barbarism committed in our name.

The world isn't full of all rainbows and unicorns and happy things, there is a dirty part to the world that will always be there and always needs cleaning, and the death penalty, in my opinion, is a necessary tool. It's just a shame it's been abused too much over the years.

How does putting someone to death really change anything compared to locking someone away for life?

 

[Strk]

I've always been curious as to why there needed to be some special "death penalty drug"

pretty much ANY of the high power opiates and sedatives will work. Shit you could just give them a bunch of potassium and they would be dead in a matter of seconds

There isn't any special death penalty drug. All they are doing is giving an overdose of a regular one. The normal cocktail is a paralytic, a sedative and potassium. The one that took hours to go through was a high dose of dilaudid and midazolam. The problem states are having is that drug companies want nothing to do with it so they are blocking their drug's use for it.

 

[D1gger]

I am an advocate of the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes, but the cost associated with it, including the mandatory appeals, leads me to believe it would just be better to have them imprisoned for life, with no parole.

If there was a way to have them put to death within a year or two of conviction it would be far better.

 

[Moonbeam]

I am an advocate of the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes, but the cost associated with it, including the mandatory appeals, leads me to believe it would just be better to have them imprisoned for life, with no parole.

If there was a way to have them put to death within a year or two of conviction it would be far better.

What would you wish for, that a killer die quickly after his crime or perhaps have time to realize and truly regret what he did? Remember, the question is, which would you wish for.

 

[cabri]

What would you wish for, that a killer die quickly after his crime or perhaps have time to realize and truly regret what he did? Remember, the question is, which would you wish for.

Regret - ha
By the time they go to trial, they realize what they did.
After conviction - do any of them express reget. NO
Only when the final moments come, will they say anything; it is more a feel good for themselves and their side; not the victims.

 

[Darwin333]

I really don't understand this entire lethal injection drug issue. We've been killing each others with chemicals for over a thousand years and somehow today with access to virtually any drug yet we somehow screw up a state execution of a completely immobilized person by lethal injection????

FFS, I can figure this issue out and I don't have a MD. Knock them out with some sort of sedative or anesthesia so it's not cruel and then pump them full of any number of drugs. 100 times the lethal dose of cyanide followed by 100 times the lethal dose of fentanyl (or better yet confiscated heroin to save money) just for good measures. People accidentally kill themselves with drugs every day and we somehow fuck up purposefully executing a prisoner with drugs, only in the US....

 

[Blanky]

Death penalty should be banned across the nation anyway. Surprised at the so-called conservatives who've no problem granting power to the state to kill citizens who no longer pose a threat to anyone.