Lethal Injection is Anything but Humane

According to New Findings it is Torture

A large debate is entering the public eye, is that the use of lethal injection to execute death row prisoners is comparable to torture.

Initially lethal injection was implemented as it was thought to be a more humane method of execution than the electric chair. However, there is growing concern that lethal injection may be far from humane.

New research carried out by the University of Miami has discovered that it is possible that prisoners being executed by lethal injection could be suffocating to death when they are still conscious. It is also thought that they could be in quite a large amount of pain. The conclusion of the study said that the drug used for lethal injection was not acting in the way it was supposed to. The results of the study have just been released in the journal of the Public Library of Science.

This had brought up important ethical issues, such as is this method of executions violating the Constitution, which bans "cruel and unusual punishment."

Currently of the states that have the death penalty, 37 use the lethal injection method as the first option for execution. In recent times the ethics of this form of execution has been question by at least 12 other states resulting in their stopping or suspending the use of lethal injection for execution.

The lethal injection contains a number of drugs. These are potassium chloride, which makes the heart stop, pancuronium which paralyses the muscles and the lungs and it also includes an anaesthetic, thiopental.

The idea of the lethal injection is that the prisoner would become unconscious and then die from induced "respiratory and cardiac arrest." However, the study found that often times the drug cocktail does not work as it should.

In the study 42 executions that took place in California and North Caroline were investigated. One of the main parts of the study included looking at the doses of each drug given to the death row prisoner. It was found that often times not enough thiopental was given leaving the prisoner conscious.