why do you waste your time writing to UNDERGRADS

We are barbarians. The same reason we slow down to watch car crashes, pay $8 to watch Jackasses drink horse semen, and vote pro-life to kill a half million Iraqis, is the same reason we still have the death penalty.

It’s how we roll, nephew.

Making the death penalty painless is a mistake. It would do a much better job as a deterrent if it was scarier than getting a IV.

Use hanging, shooting, gas chamber, electric chair or better yet try beheading.

They should have used “Old Sparky” on Díaz!

There are more than enough people. The world can easily do without anyone who is sentenced to death.

In China the condemned are used for their organs. We should do that here.

How painlessly did his victims die?

ISO gets way too much coverage. Lets just shoot the death row people. Saves us time and money.

The feedback to the op-ed is both disturbing and surprising, disturbing because of its enthusiastic embrace as a sentencing option of officially sanctioned state sponsored homicide and surprising because to read in a university newspaper that violence, including the violence which is inherent in the implementation of capital punishment, is celebrated as an option seems oxymoronic. Alternatives to capital punishment exist.

It is, I believe, important to evaluate capital punishment not so much in terms of what any one convicted prisoner either theoretically does or does not deserve but rather in terms of the lives we owe ourselves - that is, lives in which we become accessories and/or accomplices to someone else’s murder or in which we remain untarnished by eschewing collusion in the same. When the state kills, it kills in the name of the people over whom it has jurisdiction. Those people act vicariously through execution teams. Capital punishment becomes within this context a form of murder for hire - that is, the public pays others to do what it for psychological reasons may itself not fancy touching. A public which supports capital punishment must simultaneously be able to live with itslef as having replicated the same behaviour which it purportedly eschews. Why subject oneself to this type of anguish?

Individuals who are found culpable can be confined and can be contained in manners in which communal aspirations for justice and for safety can be realised. Wisconsin has for decades lived this splendid truth. Please do not spoil that splendour. In peace.

K. Bandell kjbandell@hotmail.com

Actually, anyone know how many murderers have killed again after their release from prison?

If the death penalty is actually used as a deterrent, shouldn’t they be carried out publicly?

Hangings were once great public envents. All came, with picnic baskets to enjoy the show.

They should be televised today! The ratings would be thru the roof! Talk about a reality show!

This Book changed my views about the Death Penalty A Companion book to The Innocent Man, Journey Toward Justice by Dennis Fritz. True Crime, Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. Journey Toward Justice is a testimony to the Triumph of the human Spirit and is a Memoir. Dennis Fritz was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder after a swift trail. The only thing that saved him from the Death Penalty was a lone vote from a juror. Dennis Fritz was the other Innocent man mentioned in John Grisham’s Book. which mainly is about Ronnie Williamson, Dennis Fritz’s co-defendant. Both were exonerated after spending 12 years in prison. The real killer was one of the Prosecution’s Key Witness. Read about why he went on a special diet of his while in prison, amazing and shocking. Dennis Fritz’s Story of unwarranted prosecution and wrongful conviction needs to be heard. Look for his book in book stores or at Amazon.com , Journey Toward Justice by Dennis Fritz, Publisher Seven Locks Press 2006. Read about how he wrote hundreds of letters and appellate briefs in his own defense and immersed himself in an intense study of law. He was a school teacher and a ordinary man whose wife was brutally murdered in 1975 by a deranged 17 year old neighbor. On May 8th 1987, Five years after Debbie Sue Carter’s rape and murder he was home with his young daughter and put under arrest, handcuffed and on his way to jail on charges of rape and murder. After 10 years in prison he discovered The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization. With the aid of Barry Scheck and DNA evidence Dennis Fritz was exonerated on April 15,1999 Since then, it has been a long hard road filled with twist and turns and now on his Journey Toward Justice. He never blamed the Lord and solely relied on his faith in God to make it through. He waited for God’s time and never gave up.

Sincerely, Barbara Please visit my Blog at http://barbarasblogspot.blogspot.com

Paul Heideman is in error on every issue.

First lethal injection:

Lethal Injection: Are the Challenges Spurious? Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info, below

Several issues have come up with regard to the viability of lethal injection as the preferred method of execution.

Generally, they are 1) The inmate experiencing pain during execution; 2) The ethics of medical professionals participating in executions; and 3) proper training of execution personnel.

PAIN AND LETHAL INJECTION

The evidence, including the immediate autopsy of executed serial murderer/rapist Michael Ross, supports that there is no pain within the lethal injection process.

The alleged concern is that some inmates may have been conscious, but paralyzed, during execution, because one of the three drugs used may have worn off, prior to death.

First, there is no evidence this has occurred. Secondly, if properly administered, it cannot occur with the properties and amount of the chemicals used and within the time frame of an execution.

An Associated Press reporter correctly stated that “there is little to support those claims except a few anecdotes of inmates gasping and convulsing and an article in the British medical journal Lancet.” (AP, “Death penalty foes attack lethal-injection drug”, 7/5/05)

The British Medical Journal, The Lancet, published an article critical of lethal injection. The article did not/could not identify one case where evidence existed than an inmate was conscious during execution.

The Lancet article identified 21 cases of execution where the level of “post mortem” (after death) sodium thiopental was below that used in surgery and, therefore, may suggest consciousness was possible.

A more accurate description would be all but impossible.

A “long after execution” post mortem measurement of sodium thiopental is very different from a moment of death measurement.

Dr. Lydia Conlay, chair of the department of anesthesiology, Baylor College of Medicine (Texas Medical Center, Houston) said the extrapolation of postmortem sodium thiopental levels in the blood to those at the time of execution is by no means a proven method. “I just don’t think we can draw any conclusions from (the Lancet study) , one way or the other.”

Actually, we can. The science is well known. Sodium thiopental is absorbed rapidly into the body. Long after execution blood testing of those levels means absolutely nothing with regard to the levels at the time of execution.

The Lancet article did not dispute the obvious — for executions, the sodium thiopental is administered in dosages roughly 10-20 times the amount necessary for sedation unconsciousness during surgical procedures.

Unconsciousness occurs within the first 30 seconds of the injection/execution process. The injection of the three drugs takes from 4-5 minutes. Death usually occurs within 6-7 minutes and is pronounced within 8-10 minutes.

The researchers also failed to note the much lower probability (impossibility?) that the murderer could be conscious, while all three drugs are coursing through the veins, concurrently.

Despite the Lancet article’s presumptions and omissions, there is no scientific evidence that consciousness could occur with the amounts and methods of injecting those three chemicals within the execution period.

The AP article also stated that “They (death penalty opponents) also attack lethal injection by saying that the steps to complete it haven’t been reviewed by medical professionals.”

That is irrelevant. It is not a medical procedure. Intravenous application of various chemicals has been successfully used for many, many decades. Criminal justice professionals have been trained in this application.

The chemicals used in lethal injection, as well as their individual and collective results, at the dosages used, are also well known.

Lethal injection is not a medical procedure, but the culmination of a judicial sentence carried out by criminal justice professionals, the result of which is intended as death, the outcome of every case.

Opponents of the death penalty, as well as other uninformed or deceptive sources, have been stating that even vets do not use the paralytic agent in the euthanasia of animals. This is a perversion of the veterinary position, which actually provides support for the human execution process.

Some fact checking is in order — www(dot)avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf

Some Additional Reality

From Hartford Courant, “Ross Autopsy Stirs Execution Debate—Results Cited To Counter Talk Of Pre-Death Pain”, August 11, 2005

The below is a paraphrase of parts of that article, including some exact quotes.

Results of the autopsy done on serial killer Michael Ross are being cited by several prominent doctors to refute a highly publicized article that appeared in The Lancet, the British medical journal, in April, 2005.

Critics of the Lancet article say it does not account for postmortem redistribution of the anesthetic - thiopental. The redistribution, the critics say, accounts for the lower levels of thiopental on which Dr. Koniaris based his Lancet article conclusions that the levels of anesthetic were inadequate. The Ross autopsy results document this redistribution, bolstering the critics’ assertions.

Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, was aware of the controversial Lancet article before performing the Ross autopsy. As a result, he took the additional step of drawing a sample of Ross’s blood 20 minutes after he was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. May 13. Carver took a subsequent sample during the autopsy, which began about 7 hours later, at 9:40 a.m.

The 1st sample showed a concentration of 29.6 milligrams per liter of thiopental; the second sample showed a concentration of 9.4 milligrams per liter. The 1st sample was drawn from Ross’ right femoral artery, and the second from his heart, which can account for some of the discrepancy. But Dr. Mark Heath, a New York anesthesiologist and one of the numerous doctors who have signed letters to The Lancet challenging the Koniaris article, said it clearly substantiates the postmortem redistribution of the thiopental.

Dr. Jonathan Groner, a pediatric surgeon from Ohio said he interviewed a number of forensic toxicologists before adopting the view that thiopental in a corpse leaves the blood and is absorbed by the fat, causing blood samples taken hours after death to be an unreliable marker of the levels of thiopental in the body at the time of death.

Groner described the Ross autopsy results as “a powerful refutation” of the Lancet-Koniaris study.

Dr. Ashraf Mozayani, a forensic toxicologist with the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office in Texas, said the level of thiopental “drops quite a bit” after death. Even in the living, Mozayani said, thiopental levels decline rapidly after administration of the drug. She cited one study in which a patient was administered 400 milligrams of thiopental intravenously. After two minutes the concentration in the blood was measured at 28 milligrams, but dropped to 3 milligrams concentration 19 minutes after the anesthetic was injected.

Mozayani said the declining concentration of thiopental cited in the Ross autopsy report “make sense.”

On The Lancet article, she said, “I don’t think they have the whole story - the postmortem redistribution and all the other things they have to consider for postmortem testing.”

THE MEDICAL/ETHICAL DILEMMA

Medical groups cite that there is an ethical conflict for participation in the lethal injection process, because medical professionals have a requirement to do no harm.

Those ethical codes pertain to their medical profession, only. For example, both doctors and nurses can be police and soldiers and can kill, when deemed appropriate, within those lines of duty and without violating the ethical codes of their medical profession. Medical professionals would, similarly, not violate their codes of ethics, when acting as technical experts, for executions, in a criminal justice procedure.

Physicians are often part of double or triple blind studies where there is hope that the tested drugs may, someday, prove beneficial. The physicians and other researchers know that many patients, taking placebos or less effective drugs, will suffer more additional harm or death because they are not taking the subject drug or that the subject drug will actually harm or kill more patients than the placebo of other drugs used in the study.

They knowing harm individual patients, in direct contradiction to their “do no harm” oath.

For the greater good, they sacrifice innocent, willing and brave patients.

Note, that the willing is irrelevant, from an ethical standpoint. “Do no harm” is “do no harm”. Physicians knowingly make exceptions to their do no harm requirement, every day, within their profession, where that code applies.

The do no harm has no ethical effect in a non medical context, because this ethical requirement is for medical treatments, only. Execution is not a medical treatment, but a criminal justice sanction. The basis for medical treatment is to improve the plight of the patient, for which the medical profession provides exceptions. The basis for execution is to carry out a criminal justice sentence where death is the sanction.

Justice, deterrence, retribution, just punishments, upholding the social contract, saving innocent life, etc., are all recognized as aspects of the death penalty, all dealing with the greater good.

Are murderers on death row willing participants? They willingly committed the crime and , therefore, willingly exposed themselves to the social contract of that jurisdiction.

Lethal injection is not a medical procedure. It is a criminal justice sanction authorized by law. Therefore, there is no ethical conflict with medical codes of conduct.

NOTE: 40,000 to 100,000 innocents die, every year, in the US because of medical misadventure, or improper medical treatment. (1)

PROPER TRAINING

In every state, there are hundreds or thousands of people trained for IV application of drugs or the taking of blood. Sadly, even hard core drug addicts are proficient in IV application.

There may be only 1 or 2 times where personnel error may have led to problems in the lethal injection process. That is out of nearly 900 lethal injections in the US.

It appears that some 500-1000 innocent patients die, every year, in the US, due to some type of medical misadventure, with anesthesia. (1)

I am unaware of evidence that shows criminal justice professionals are more likely to commit some error in the lethal injection process, than are medical professionals in IV application. Furthermore, even with errors in lethal injection, those cases resulted in the death of the inmate - the intended outcome for the guilty murderer. In the errors of medical professionals, we are speaking of death or other harm to innocent patients - the opposite of the intended outcome.

1) see “Deaths from Medical Misadventure”at www(dot)wrongdiagnosis.com/m/medicalmisadventure/deaths.htm and “Health Grades Quality Study: Patient Safety in American Hospitals, July , 2004” at www.(dot)healthgrades.com/media/english/pdf/HGPatientSafetyStudy_Final.pdf

originally written May, 2005. Updated as merited.

copyright 2005-2007

Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters e-mail sharpjfa(at)aol.com, 713-622-5491 Houston, Texas

Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.

A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.

Pro death penalty sites www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm www(dot)dpinfo.com www(dot)homicidesurvivors.com joshmarquis(dot)blogspot.com/ www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/deathpenaltydebate.htm www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com www(dot)prodeathpenalty.org/ www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/deathpenalty_contents.htm (Sweden) www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html

With regard to the poor and the death penalty, Paul Heideman may reconsider:

No one disputes that wealthier defendants can hire better lawyers and, therefore, should have a legal advantage over their poorer counterparts. The US has executed about 0.15% of all murderers since new death penalty statutes were enacted in 1973. Is there evidence that wealthier capital murderers are less likely to be executed than their poorer ilk, based upon the proportion of capital murders committed by different those different economic groups?