Idaho halts execution by lethal injection after 8 failed attempts to insert IV line
Idaho halts execution by lethal injection after 8 failed attempts to insert IV line
71 comments
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Couldn't find anyone who knew what they were doing, huh? Not many medical professionals out there that want to be involved in murdering people.
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I suspect that you don't want the people willing to do this actually to do this.
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Doctors will not perform lethal injection. It goes against the Hippocratic Oath:"First do no harm"
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Not only that but Idaho has some draconian abortion positions so I'm sure that at this point a lot of medical professionals have left the state. But yeah you're right this does sort of go against the "do no harm" thingy doctors are always prattling on about.
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Im not a fan of the death penalty, but how the fuck do you mess up injecting someone.
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Doctors, by oath, cannot conduct lethal injections or assist in any executions. What this means is that these jobs are usually passed onto people with no medical background (because if you had a medical background, why the fuck would you be working for the justice system?). Could you find the proper vein to insert a LI line into? I couldn't.
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Some prisons do employ doctors. But they're generally just treating prisoners, not helping with this kind of thing.
However it has been revealed at times that there's been at least a handful of physicians who have helped with lethal injections. To be clear, every code of ethics, medical board, and every professional physician organization roundly condemns any participation in these. Some states like Georgia have specifically made laws preventing medical boards in their state from disciplining physicians who do so if it's found out (as any medical board likely would try to do).
Often it is passed to people with no medial experience as you said, but there have been at least a handful of healthcare workers who have participated in them at times. How widespread it is isn't super clear, as anyone involved for the most part has tried to keep it secret, and the prison system has no desire to reveal this either.
And I think it's incredibly damaging to society and trust with health care workers as a whole to have these death penalty states trying to involve health care workers in this, even if only a tiny handful have actually done so. If they're really intent on continuing this barbaric practice just make it a firing squad, leave medical workers out of it. I'd personally favor just getting rid of the death penalty altogether. Not worth it for so many reasons.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/lethal-injection-and-physicians-state-law-vs-medical-ethics
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There are plenty of reasons that your veins may not be suitable, and it can be as simple as dehydration.
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They don't give these people any training. Sticking someone, especially if they have scarred veins or are dehydrated, is difficult. Doubly so if you have no idea what the fuck you're doing
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It can really tricky to locate a vein on some people, especially if they are dehydrated (and this inmate might know this). A competent person with medical training and experience can always find a vein, but I would conjecture the prison system hires barely qualified folks for this job.
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Are medical doctors actually allowed to be prison executioners?
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As someone who's been stuck several times before the person with medical training taps in the next person, who also needs several tries, it is not my experience that you can always find a vein (unless I'm just really unlucky and the hospital employs a lot of incompetent people). Sometimes a nurse can get blood out on the first try, but sometimes they're sticking both arms and moving onto my hands and I end up with two arms covered in bruises the next day. Sometimes they go get a pediatric needle and that helps. Last time, we called in the "IV Team" who used an ultrasound to place my IV. Some of us just have difficult veins.
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Went to the ER one time with severe sinus pain. Nurses spent 30 minutes trying to insert an iv. They used an ultrasound machine and everything. I was so fucking miserable, my mom begged them to just stop. All I needed was some steroids and to go home. I was probably dehydrated from being there, and I'm hard to stick anyway.
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Well, the type of drugs used for lethal injections can't be done like vaccines and the technique needs a level of skill to actually get the vein. They obviously chose someone who was unskilled.
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Poor health and maybe even dehydration of the prisoner to be executed can make veins inaccessible. It took a considerable number of sticks to get my IV in for a colonoscopy because the preparation left me dehydrated.
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how the fuck do you mess up injecting someone.
It does happen (I mean, not even talking about lethal injection). People do miss veins.
Eight times seems kind of overkill, though.
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Can you imagine the strain on a person to come to terms with facing your final moments and an execution. Then the trauma of being strapped to a table facing certain death, then having to go through 8 failed attempts to kill you. Then go back to a cell and come to terms with facing the ordeal all over again. America is fucked up.
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I'm not saying that it was on purpose, but either way it's a mock execution. What happened to just shooting people? That seems like a pretty solid solution.
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Also cheaper too.
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"Cleaner" methods like lethal injection are more pleasant for spectators, which is always the real point of executions.
A guillotine is ugly, which makes it "brutal" despite being the most humane method possible.
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Pumping the cell with carbon dioxide without the prisoner knowing when it was happening. They'd go to sleep (or stay asleep) and never wake up. Painless stress free death.
But you know "gas chambers" bad
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Pumping the cell with carbon dioxide
I think you mean "monoxide".
Breathing in carbon dioxide is nasty.
Shake a soda bottle when it's somewhat empty and then open it and take a breathe.
It's definitely something you'd notice, and most certainly not painless or stress free.
Euthanasia chambers use just nitrogen. The air is already 80% nitrogen, so breathing it is completely unnoticeable, you'll just become hypoxic with the lack of oxygen.
But euthanasia is quite different from killing someone. Wanting to sleep off vs being forced to die, essentially.
Capital punishment is rather archaic.
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Did they gets some rando off the street to insert the IV needle? That's shit even every nurse can do.
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You'd be surprised, some people's veins are what a phlebotomist would call "rolly" and move when they attempt to insert the needle. someone else can probably explain better than me.
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I'm a phlebotomist and this is correct, there's also many other factors that can result in missing a vein, dehydration being the biggest factor and even just the size of the vein.
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With me it even depends on the arm. I get my blood checked yearly and they always try the right arm first by default, and they're always struggling to find a suitable vein near the surface. Then I offer them to try my left arm and it's done within 10 seconds.
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Essentially.
Medical ethics prevent actual medical professionals from participating in executions. So they make random prison employees do it. So it's often botched.
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I got hospitalized, 2 nurses couldn't find my vein after multiple stabs. A elder doctor came by and teach them some magic trick.
It's been this way my whole life and now I have a fear of being stabbed by needles.
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How about we just don't kill people at all? If it's wrong for anyone else to kill someone, why would it be okay for the state to do it?
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The state shouldn't do it, but if they are, they should be made to do it dirty and feel the consequences. Making an execution clean and easy is just find encourage lawmakers to put more people to death.
The governor should be forced to carry out the execution himself, give him incentive to pardon
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By that reasoning, the state should not defend itself or the public.
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See, this is why you go in with a backup plan. Can't get IV access? Claw hammer doesn't give a shit.
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Or a face mask connected to a Nitrogen tank.
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71 comments
Dear Supreme Court Originalists:
The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
I want them to explain exactly why this isn't cruel.
The supreme Court ruled that due to the wording, the punishment must be both cruel and unusual. This is for sure cruel, but it's not weird enough
Literally nothing is unusual if u do it enough times.
And the way they determine "unusual" is by doing this absolutely ahistoric, arbitrary polling of current policy. They cherry pick whatever statistics serve the politics of the person writing the decision.
e.g., when ruling whether it was "unusual" to execute people with cogitative disabilities (Atkins v. Virginia), they did a tally of how many states allowed execution in these cases vs did not but deliberately omitted how many states do not allow ANY executions. Then concluded that slightly more states allow executions of the mentally unfit than don't even though it was absolutely incontestable fact that the vast majority of states did not allow this kind of execution.
Ignore that the ruling technically banned those executions... because it factually didn't, since it left it up to states to define cognitive disability however they pleased and the behavior of the kill-happy states was not affected by the ruling.
When I was really sick and needed regular blood tests, I'd have some nurses take at least a half-dozen stabs at me before getting a usable vein. We're talking both arms and then moving to the top of the hand.
It happens. I wouldn't call it cruel or a form of punishment, as they weren't purposely trying to make my life miserable.
It's mildly annoying as the patient, and I'm sure a little embarrassing for the person with the needle.
Did you know it was going to kill you if it worked? Because that would be the cruel part. Imagine knowing, for days, maybe even months after your last appeal that you were going to die. You know the exact date and time. You know nothing you can do will stop it.
How is that not cruel?
Reasons aside, they were killing this man. Sounds pretty cruel when you add that little caveat.
"I can't define it, but I know it when i see it."
Follow up ruling:
"I cant see it."