It appears now that we are asking death row inmates whether they want to die from lethal injection or nitrogen gas. I don't know whether they still have the option of the electric chair, gas chamber or by firing squads. I did read somewhere, but it was on social media so I don't trust it, that other states give inmates multiple options. I didn't see hanging on the options list but I could have missed it.
Whether you agree or disagree with capital punishment, the U.S. Constitution protects inmates from cruel and unusual punishment. Some courts have intervened and said lethal injection by certain cocktails of drugs violated the constitution because inmates suffered, or at least gasped, before they took their final breath.
I personally support the death penalty. I have a problem with how it is carried out. If someone is sentenced to death today for raping and killing three children it will be 20 or 30 years from now before they get put to death.
If there is 'cruel and unusual punishment' it's putting a man on death row for 30 years. As Clint Eastwood said in the movie 'Outlaw Josey Wales', dying wasn't as hard as living.
I agree that other courts need to look at death penalty cases. If you are convicted of capital murder in Escambia County, Ala., and sentenced to death there are automatic appeals in place to make sure every 'I' was dotted and every 'T' was crossed in the trial. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is the appeal process that runs for decades. Once the inmate (or his lawyers) realize that the evidence and testimony presented in trial supports the jury decision to find a person guilty and a judge's decision to put him to death, the appeals turn toward how they will be put to death.
The time frame really bothers me because when the time finally comes to put someone to death we seem to focus on the person on death row and not the people he or she killed and the lives ruined. Some guy walks into a mom and pop store to rob the place, kills pop and rapes mom before he kills her then walks out with $30 in his pocket. Thirty years later as he's facing death all we hear about is the killer and how he's turned his life around and found Jesus while behind bars. We don't hear about the children and grandchildren who had their lives ruined and turned upside down at the time of the killing. We don't hear about the fear a community may have been under while law enforcement tracked down the cold-blooded killer.
I know many people who want to go back in time and hang convicted killers on the front lawn of the courthouse the day they get convicted. We won't go there.
But I still have a problem with all this fuss about how we go about killing condemned killers. Have there been botched executions in the past where the killer may have suffered a little pain? My bet is yes. But then I try to think about the pain they inflicted when they raped and killed someone.
Here's what I don't understand about claiming lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Have you ever been put to sleep for surgery? I have several times. Somebody can put us to sleep so deep that doctors can cut through all parts of our bodies and we don't feel a thing. We don't suffer until we wake up. If you've had surgery, or even a colonoscopy, you know what I'm talking about. That nurse starts that needle in the vile hooked to your arm and the next thing you know that three-hour surgery is over and you didn't feel a thing while they were inside your body either cutting things out or fixing them.
We can put someone deep enough to sleep to take his failing heart out of his chest and replace it with another one.
Why not use the same stuff we use to put someone to sleep for surgery? Just don't wake them up and I guarantee you they won't suffer. Either give them an overdose of what they give people they hope to wake up or kill them while they are in that deep, no pain sleep mode.
I can't think of a more humane way to execute someone than to use the drugs used by anesthesiologists everyday.
Don't be fooled to think this is about creating a non 'cruel and unusual' way to put condemned people to death. It's an attack on the death penalty, clear and simple.
