Ohio gov. reviews lethal injection procedures

truthinjustice.org

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has delayed the state’s next two executions to allow a full review of lethal injection procedures, according to the AP. Strickland ordered the reprieves today for inmates Lawrence Reynolds and Darryl Durr in the midst of a legal battle over Reynolds’s execution, which had been scheduled for Thursday.

Strickland wants the Ohio corrections department to finish updating its protocols for dealing with long delays in finding usable veins on inmates before the state executes Reynolds and Durr. The governor’s reasoning is ancillary to the fundamental notion that executions must not be “cruel” or “unusual,” terms that are subjective by nature. Killing any human being is both cruel and unusual, which is why we got together as a society a long time ago and decided that killing each other is definitely not cool.

However, America remains one of the only western industrialized country to still use the death penalty. Most western nations have banned the death penalty primarily because the practice of killing human beings is inherently cruel and unusual. Governor Strickland has a long road ahead of him if he thinks the corrections department will one day find a magic way to make the process wherein a human being is injected with barbiturates (that may wear off and lead to consciousness for up to two hours, during which the human being experiences excruciating pain and may be unable to express their pain because they have been rendered paralyzed by the paralytic agent) humane.

Surely, Strickland is already familiar with these types of executions going very wrong. There was no humane way to kill 53-year-old Ohio inmate Romell Broom, who wept and tried to help his executioners find a vein, only to leave the death chamber alive.

In 2006, a Ohio prisoner named Joseph A. Clark lifted his head from the gurney after his vein collapsed and said “It don’t work, it don’t work, it don’t work, it ain’t working,” repeatedly, according to one witness. This led to “moaning, crying out and guttural noises” 30 minutes later. An hour and a half after the execution started, Clark finally died.

In 2007, another Ohio prisoner, Christopher Newton, took two hours to die due to executioners’ difficulty finding a vein, the very problem that caused the current execution delays.

The reason many states use lethal injections is because society recognizes that killing human beings is cruel and unusual, which is why prisoners aren’t taken into fields out back and immediately shot. That would be cruel. That’s why scientists, many working for the Nazis, came up with the aesthetically sterile practice of injecting humans with chemicals until they died. There was little blood and thrashing involved in the executions, and so the practice seemed humane. Of course, now we know lethal injection is not painless or humane, and in fact many times the process is botched, and yet the state continues to kill people.

I wonder when all the pro-life activists, who insist that life is precious and every life is a gift from God, will insist states end their practice of killing human beings. I also wonder when Governor Strickland will realize the corrections department has a difficult time killing people because human beings don’t want to die, and stubbornly insist upon living. Any effort to end those lives is inherently cruel, and that fact isn’t going to change any time soon.