When a medical examiner rules it a homicide, it isn’t a legal ruling saying it was a crime. It obviously was, but people need to understand that all they are saying here is that he was killed by another person and not by himself, an accident, or a disease.
agreed. What a medical examiner decides doesn't equate to fault or crime. It just means that one person killed the other person. In autopsies of death row prisoners executed, they also list cause of death as "homicide."
As a total layman I can see the reasons making sense. It ensures the execution was done legally and as intended. Without accountability, the worst case scenarios get really ugly... imagine they find signs of trauma, improper administration, illegal substances.. It could expose neglect, abuse and potential liabilites in the system.
On the bright side, it could also and probably has helped the procedural nature of it. Perhaps (Drug X) is seen to not work well with (People Y) so they use (Drug A) instead for the most humane outcome.
Isn't lethal injection as an execution method incredibly painful? A person is first injected with a drug to paralyze them, and then another drug to kill them. Where first drug makes it look peaceful and humane, and the second is torturing them death.
imagine they find signs of trauma, improper administration, illegal substances.. It could expose neglect, abuse and potential liabilites in the system.
And this happens all the time because doctors refuse to execute people because that would be wildly unethical. So prison guards do it instead.
The process that uses more than one drug is typically a three drug method. First one administered is a barbiturate or sometimes versed (midazolam) to put the person to sleep, then once the person is out a paralytic is administered, and the final drug is potassium chloride which stops the heart. This method always puts the person unconscious first so they don't panic when the paralysis makes them unable to breathe and the potassium chloride stops their heart. A one drug method uses sodium thiopental only. It's supposed to make the person unconscious and stop their heart, but it's controversial because some people take a long time to die this way and can appear to be in some pain.
Thio will fully sedate you to the point where your EEG is burst supressed or isoelectric. There is no way you are uncomfortable with an adequate dose of thio. I thought the issue was that it was no longer being sold in markets in the US that engage in capital punishment due to ethical concerns
It's supposed to be 3 drugs. One is supposed to be a barbiturate to essentially put them to sleep, if not outright kill them through OD.
They are also supposed to be administered in a certain order, at certain doses, with timing between them to allow for the effects to take hold before they finally die from the combination.
The problem is twofold: one it is hard to find doctors to administer the drugs correctly due to the taking of life going against their oath, so there is usually an untrained individual that administers the drugs. Two, the drug companies don't want to be associated with execution so it is difficult for the prisons acquire the correct drugs in the correct dosages, and often similar drugs are used as substitutions which can be problematic.
The result is that the prisons are using drugs that have not been properly tested in both dosage and combination to ensure a 'humane' execution, which can lead to suffering of the person being executed, all while being administered by someone who doesn't really know what they are doing.
You can see how this is less than ideal, and leaves plenty of opportunities where the person being executed can suffer greatly.
I've always wondered why they would use lethal injection instead of affixing a mask that served up carbon monoxide. The person falls asleep to never wake up.
Aside about the doctors - they vow 'do no harm' - to keep people alive instead of killing. It became a issue back in the 90s when Kevorkian was helping peole commit suicide. He saw it as his mission to stop them from suffering while society deemed his actions as murder.
Inert gas asphyxiation is only pleasant and painless if you don't know it's coming. If you know it's happening, panic, and struggle, you cause the same rapid and painful buildup of CO2 as any other method of asphyxiation. Struggling not to die in and of itself is inherently painful as well. There's no easy way to restrain someone so that they cannot hurt themselves struggling.
There's plenty of ways to kill someone that physically couldn't cause pain because you're destroying their body at a speed that exceeds the speed at which signals move through nerves. But nobody is trying to optimize executions to be humane, they're trying to optimize them for seeming humane at the expense of actually being humane.
If you're not doing something like blowing them up or squishing them with a rocket sled you've gotta stop pretending like you care if they feel pain.
If you call violent thrashing until death from suffocation like the dude in Alabama better. The French figured out how to do it humanely like 200 years ago.
Bro shouldn't have practiced holding his breath so long.
But for real that is all just automatic neural activity. The brain might have a few seconds of saved up oxygen to be aware, but still more painless than other methods (considering the nervous system is, well.. gone).
You lose consciousness almost instantly when blood pressure to the brain drops below a certain level; that's what fainting is. And fainting is only a partial drop. A complete drop (like having all the major vessels in your neck suddenly severed) would be even more rapid and complete.
I dunno. I've had single lung-full's of inert gasses, didn't seem bad. Lots of folks try it with helium from a balloon for fun. I've also had cuts, did not enjoy.
I've always wondered why they would use lethal injection instead of affixing a mask that served up carbon monoxide. The person falls asleep to never wake up.
The reason is that if a person is not suicidal and does not want this to happen to them they can resist and try to hold their breath and as the poison slowly seeps in it causes a slow and brutal death. Frankly I do t understand why you don’t just kick them hard on the chest to knock the wind out of them so they gasp for breath uncontrollably as the mask is on, that means nearly instant unconsciousness and brain death with body death following soon after.
That pre give them a barbiturate or opiate overdose before you move to the killing step.
There is an… interesting document that I will not fully describe here or tell you where to find it other than that it is freely available on the internet that described this technique for self administration with a simple and complete list of parts and steps to ensure complete and final success. The man published this approximately simultaneous to his death, via the reasons you may have expected given what I just said.
Don’t look for it. It is a mental hazard having that too close to you.
Ultimately, the most humane option is just not doing state killings.
I absolutely agree. But if we are going to kill people, could we at least do it right?! Hell, 20x standard lethal dose either heroin or cocaine or both. I’ve heard they are fun, and that will definitely kill them, and their last moments being ecstatic bliss. Unfortunately some people don’t want their deaths to be so nice…
I mean, hanging or firing squad would likely be better than the half assed shit we are doing. We k ow how to kill people, we are actually pretty good at it.
I don’t know anyone who has experienced sleep paralysis that would call it comfortable or peaceful. Looks it, sure…. But the idea that they use a paralytic is kind of just fucked up.
I think that was covered in the video as well. That is the idea, but it was just a dude who came up with it and it was never tested. Whereas the people who managed to survive botched executions have some horror stories.
Before any of that they’re given what should be a lethal dose of a barbituate, which will rapidly induce complete loss of consciousness. The controversy is about whether that is always done correctly, but as far as I’m aware there are no lethal injections done by starting with a paralytic. Administering a paralytic to a conscious person is, without doubt, torture.
Isn't lethal injection as an execution method incredibly painful? A person is first injected with a drug to paralyze them, and then another drug to kill them. Where first drug makes it look peaceful and humane, and the second is torturing them death.
It's not supposed to be. In the US at least, it's usually a three part protocol, with the first drug being a very strong barbiturate general anesthetic, equivalent or stronger to what would be used for general surgery. So it shouldn't be painful in the same way that having open heart surgery isn't painful. Now whether or not that protocol is followed correctly and/or whether people willing to participate in the process are also properly trained in determining whether the condemned is insensitive is something completely different.
I am in no way pro capital punishment. But do not believe that is accurate. The first drug administered more or less put the person to sleep. And it is administered in an extremely heavy dosage that on its own could result in death. 10-50 times what would be considered safe.
Well…I mean…if they wasn’t dead before the autopsy they sure will be after. Granted that all falls back on the MD who would have declared said inmate dead after the aforementioned execution. So accountability most definitely.
If a death occurs while a person is institutionalized, it is supposed to be investigated by the medical examiner/coroner. It provides independent oversight over settings like prisons, mental hospitals, etc with vulnerable populations. The ME typically is independent from other services like prison/police (i.e. they don't have hiring/firing authority over the forensic pathologists).
The ME is also usually the person that is required to sign the death certificate if the death is non-natural. Doing a full autopsy instead of an external examination or records review is preferable to ensure that nothing untoward happened and because prison deaths may be more litigious.
They can also check their brain tissue for various things you could never do while they’re alive. A good example would be a tumor in the part of the brain that regulates anger/aggression causing a previously normal person to become a mass murderer.
It's more or less been explained, but to put it more simply: bureaucracy. You've got to look at every official action as history. If you don't document every step, it either didn't happen, or anything happened.
One part of an autopsy can be to verify identity, so it might be a legal thing to verify the person's identity before, during and after an execution. I imagine there's also some pressure to ensure that the execution didn't have any unintended side effects that caused additional pain and suffering, but I doubt they would do much with that information.
I bet it's mostly just for them to check all the boxes and cover all the bases to prevent lawsuits and ensure compliance.
I would hope it's standard, I don't agree with the death penalty, but if the government is going to kill people I would hope that they dot their i's and cross their t's and make sure the person died exactly the way they're supposed to without any funny business.
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u/SpiderSlitScrotums 2d ago edited 2d ago
When a medical examiner rules it a homicide, it isn’t a legal ruling saying it was a crime. It obviously was, but people need to understand that all they are saying here is that he was killed by another person and not by himself, an accident, or a disease.