An unprecedented scheduled execution spree has begun this week in Arkansas. The state initially aimed to carry out the death sentence on eight people in 11 days before its stockpile of one of the three drugs used for lethal injections, called midazolam, reached its expiry date of 30 April.
Last night, legal hurdles were overcome in one case and the first execution took place. Arkansas should have let the midazolam expire. In fact, it shouldn鈥檛 have used it at all.
Whatever you think of capital punishment, the drugs used for lethal injection in the US today don鈥檛 offer the certainty of a swift end, because of a horrifying combination of a lack of data, historical quirks and uninformed decision-makers.
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Drawn out agony
Compared with other methods of execution, lethal injection has a clinical air. According to a , it was the only form of execution that a majority of people didn鈥檛 think was a 鈥渃ruel and unusual punishment鈥�. Only 18 per cent considered it cruel.
In fact, this method has a of going awry: 7 per cent, compared with 5 per cent for gas chambers, 2 per cent for electrocutions, and 0 per cent for firing squads, according to the book Gruesome Spectacles: Botched executions and America鈥檚 death penalty, by Austin Sarat of Amherst College in Massachusetts.
A botched execution by lethal injection can be a terrible thing. When Clayton Lockett was killed in Oklahoma in 2014, he .
Triple hit
The way lethal injection is supposed to work is that the condemned person receives three drugs: First the sedative midazolam, related to Valium, to render them unconscious. Then a muscle relaxant, vecuronium bromide, to paralyse, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart and kill.
But the second and third drugs are agonising if the first doesn鈥檛 fully knock someone out. And there are worries that the paralysing drug can make it hard to tell if that has happened.
When the current US method of lethal injection was concocted in 1977 and first used in Texas in 1982, barbiturates were used instead of midazolam. Barbiturates are far more effective at knocking someone out, and they can also stop the heart.
But in the 2000s, barbiturates became harder to obtain for this and states cast around for an alternative. With no particular evidence that it would be good for the job, they settled on midazolam.
Manufacturers of all three types of drugs used have fought to stop their products being obtained to kill people, and some were involved in legal challenges in Arkansas.
Cruel delusion
Arkansas鈥檚 rush to carry out the death penalties shows that the campaign to deny supply has been broadly successful. It looks as if authorities there are unsure that they will be able to get any more midazolam. However, the result is that other execution methods are now being proposed.
Oklahoma recently made it legal to use nitrogen gas, an idea proposed not by a medical professional but by a criminology professor. Nitrogen gas suffocates, and is used in some doctor-assisted suicides. But there鈥檚 little to no evidence on how it works with an unwilling participant, and it has never been used for an execution.
Regardless of the morality of the death penalty, it still exists in many states. As long as it does, and lethal injection is used, drug use should be based on data and input from medical experts 鈥� otherwise it鈥檚 a cruel delusion to call them humane.
