States using lethal injection to execute killers struggle to get execution drugs because pharmaceutical companies won’t provide them. So prison officials get creative. They go to compounding pharmacies that create the drugs for them.
It doesn’t always work as it should. In fact it often doesn’t. Oklahoma’s two prior executions were horror shows. In the first, witnesses watched the condemned man writhe in pain for 43 minutes. The second time, the inmate cried out in pain that his body was “on fire.”
The Eighth Amendment forbids “cruel and unusual punishment.” Lawyers for Oklahoma’s death row inmates sued to stop further executions while they challenged Oklahoma’s methods. Their argument is those methods are unconstitutional.
A federal court agreed to a stay, but last night the Supreme Court’s 5 voting conservatives lifted it (1 conservative justice recused himself because he’d been involved in the case as a lower court judge), and hours later the execution was carried out — with similar results. The inmate convulsed, vomited, and cursed after the execution drugs were administered. (Read story here.)
This isn’t about the condemned man’s guilt or innocence, or the brutality of the crime. He stabbed a prison cafeteria worker to death. If you believe in the death penalty, he was a candidate for it. But this isn’t about that. Our founding fathers wrote into the Constitution a guarantee that our government wouldn’t torture people to death. Oklahoma is now 3-for-3 in carrying out torture executions.
A quote attributed to Albert Einstein is: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” What were those 5 justices thinking by allowing them to do this?