Anyone who has caught up with the news of the botched execution in Oklahoma, can't be other than be repulsed by it, disgusted and appalled. And this in a country which claims to be civilised. Just imagine had the same scenario played out in an African or Middle Eastern country. The reaction of the Americans would have been swift and condemnatory.
"Lockett’s botched execution follows on the heels of a similar debacle in Ohio. On Jan. 16, Dennis McGuire was subjected to a two-drug cocktail. His son, also Dennis, witnessed the ordeal: “My dad began gasping and struggling to breathe. I watched his stomach heave. I watched him try to sit up against the straps on the gurney. I watched him repeatedly clench his fists. It appeared to me he was fighting for his life, but suffocating. The agony and terror of watching my dad suffocate to death lasted more than 19 minutes.”
There are many more such stories. States are desperate for the execution drugs, as pharmaceutical companies in Europe refuse to sell to state governments in the U.S. any chemical that might be used in an execution. The Colorado Independent obtained email documents showing the assistant Oklahoma attorney general joking with a Texas colleague that he might be able to help Texas get the drugs in exchange for 50-yard line tickets for a top college football game.
The Death Penalty Information Center lists 144 people who have been exonerated from death row since 1973. These are innocent people who might have been executed. An article published in the respected Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, released just a day before Lockett’s execution, suggests that more than 4 percent of all death-row prisoners would be exonerated, given enough time to properly review their cases. Even in cases where guilt is not in question, an argument can be made on a purely financial basis. It costs three to four times more to execute a prisoner than it does to incarcerate for life with no chance of parole.
Most developed nations have banned capital punishment. The United States stands shoulder to shoulder in continuing this barbaric practice with countries like China, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. As states commit atrocious experiments on prisoners like Lockett, it is vital to remember that the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Sadly, cruel and unusual is becoming more and more usual."
"Lockett’s botched execution follows on the heels of a similar debacle in Ohio. On Jan. 16, Dennis McGuire was subjected to a two-drug cocktail. His son, also Dennis, witnessed the ordeal: “My dad began gasping and struggling to breathe. I watched his stomach heave. I watched him try to sit up against the straps on the gurney. I watched him repeatedly clench his fists. It appeared to me he was fighting for his life, but suffocating. The agony and terror of watching my dad suffocate to death lasted more than 19 minutes.”
There are many more such stories. States are desperate for the execution drugs, as pharmaceutical companies in Europe refuse to sell to state governments in the U.S. any chemical that might be used in an execution. The Colorado Independent obtained email documents showing the assistant Oklahoma attorney general joking with a Texas colleague that he might be able to help Texas get the drugs in exchange for 50-yard line tickets for a top college football game.
The Death Penalty Information Center lists 144 people who have been exonerated from death row since 1973. These are innocent people who might have been executed. An article published in the respected Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, released just a day before Lockett’s execution, suggests that more than 4 percent of all death-row prisoners would be exonerated, given enough time to properly review their cases. Even in cases where guilt is not in question, an argument can be made on a purely financial basis. It costs three to four times more to execute a prisoner than it does to incarcerate for life with no chance of parole.
Most developed nations have banned capital punishment. The United States stands shoulder to shoulder in continuing this barbaric practice with countries like China, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. As states commit atrocious experiments on prisoners like Lockett, it is vital to remember that the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Sadly, cruel and unusual is becoming more and more usual."
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