Oklahoma royally screwed up killing one of their prisoners this week. The line to his vein failed and the drug that was supposed to knock him out before they stopped his heart and his breathing never worked. The guy evenutally died an hour later from a heart attack. Cruel and ununusal punishment, anyone?
Why the fuck up? The New Yorker has a great article about the whys.
Oklahoma had run out of lethal-injection drugs for the same reason that other death-penalty states have also run out of them. As Jeffrey Toobin described in a Talk of the Town piece, the sole American manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a key ingredient in lethal injections, stopped making the drug in 2011. Death-penalty states turned to European manufacturers, but it became impossible to import the drugs to the United States, owing to the European Union’s commitment to wipe out capital punishment worldwide. Left with dwindling supplies, states shifted their execution protocols toward the improvisational, recombining drugs and seeking the services of compounding pharmacies, which are loosely regulated by the federal government.
Will this botched-up job at capital punishment shift public support for the death penalty?
Apt. 11d 
I think it’s fairly certain that episodes like this have no effect on public support for capital punishment, nor do I see why it would. Surely the condemned man suffered less than his victim (the facts in this case were fairly horrific), so if he is going to be punished by death, why would some brief suffering on the way be morally relevant? Opposition to capital punishment has to rest on absolutist moral foundations, not on mere squeamishness.
LikeLike
Everybody stops counting at 2 these days.
LikeLike
But, regardless of public opinion, we do have a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It’s just possible that we might reach the point where we succeed in arguing that there is no non-cruel and unusual method of killing a person. There are now 18 states with no death penalty (6 of those, 1/3, in the last 10 years).
The legal wrangling in OK specifically involved the method of execution. Reading the protocol in the OK case, the use of untested drugs, the lack of competent medical personnel, the convolutions to shield individuals from being responsible for the death (untrained lay people behind a wall to administer the drugs), it looks a lot like the machinery of death is being constrained between the rock of restrictions, public opinion, boycotts, and the requirement against cruel methods.
Maybe some public opinion will change — there’s at least one human interest story about a doctor who says he’s changed his mind. But, this might be a situation in which the legal requirements will lead public opinion. There might be those who like balancing the equivalence of the cruelty of the crime committed with the state’s actions, but, I think, in practice, that this is a false equivalence. How many of those who are comfortable wanting the murderer to suffer would be willing to torture him themselves? I’m guessing that a lot of us are squeamish about torture.
I think the DP is another example where the standards can change rapidly — reach a tipping point. The other day, I casually stated that I thought the captain of the ferry in Korea should be put to death (I’m not sure I believe that, but it is something I was willing to say) — my 10 year old yelled at me and said that my view was completely unacceptable. This story might accelerate us to a tipping point.
Washington state also uses lethal injection — Sodium thiopental, which is currently unavailable. But, we also governor-imposed moratorium on executions, so no one is worrying about the practicalities. The practicalities are complicated, as anyone who has any personal knowledge of animal euthanasia knows (there are papers on the topic, that discuss the details of pain, suffering, brain death of different methods, and in conjunction with the constraints of the science, because, for example, many anesthetics are counter-indicated in research in which the brain is going to be examined).
LikeLike
Predicting the future course of the law is pretty tricky, but here are a couple considerations.
Capital punishment is an issue where the elite and popular opinions divide (that is what it means to say something is “unconstitutional,” that the elite doesn’t like it). However, the past few decades suggest that capital punishment, unlike abortion or gay marriage, is not an issue where the elite possesses the requisite will to force its will on the populace. (Probably because more members of the elite want, or can imagine themselves wanting, abortion or gay marriage than can imagine themselves facing capital punishment.)
On the other hand, as crime falls, the issue loses salience in the minds of the populace. So there may be less resistance for the elite to overcome.
LikeLike
It is very difficult to predict the course of a law. Death penalty opponents thought they’d ended the practice in the US in the 1970’s and saw it return. The problems with the machinery of death are difficult to resolve, but might be resolved to legal standards. Changes in public opinion (a 20% increase in people who oppose the DP) might stall: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/30/botched-execution-in-oklahoma-renews-death-penalty-debate/. The Democratic governors of states like OR, CA, WA, and CO might be replaced by Republicans more sympathetic to the death penalty.
But, in the past 5 years, 30+ states haven’t executed anyone: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/jurisdictions-no-recent-executions. Yesterday, Kasich, a Republican governor of one of the outlier states (Ohio, with 20 executions in the last 5 years) commuted the sentence of a death row inmate to life in prison. Virginia, which had executed 110 people since the beginning of the modern death penalty era only executed 5 in the last 5 years. I can’t speak to when Texas might change — (37% of the executions in the modern era), but I’m not holding my breath for marriage equality there, either (except to the extent required by the constitution and federal laws).
Opponents of the death penalty may not have the same personal interest in the death penalty as do proponents of marriage equality, but the changing trends are there now and the potential for a tipping point (say, when Ohio joins its Midwestern neighbors in, making the DP rare, if not stopping it all together). When a state, like Wyoming, hasn’t executed anyone in 25 years, and the mechanism of killing a prisoner is complicated, are they really going to bother reinstating the process?
I don’t know that we will end the death penalty in the US, unless through court fiat (I leave open the possibility that the Supreme court could declare all methods of execution unconstitutional). But, I think CA, WA, and OR will eliminate the DP, in practice if not in law and that the majority of states will not be using the death penalty in 5-10 years.
LikeLike
Like it or not, a lot of perfectly nice, normal people are going to read about the botched execution, read about the crimes involved, and think Lockett got off easy and that it’s too bad Charles Warner didn’t go first.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/04/30/why-were-the-two-inmates-in-oklahoma-on-death-row-in-the-first-place/
LikeLike
At the very least, as far as I am concerned, and even more so, apparently, my children, these would be only otherwise, “perfectly nice and normal people.”
And, they might quickly move to the category of not being perfectly nice and reasonable people. In fact, I can’t imagine that i would find celebration of the way that the people of Oklahoma killed this man to be acceptable in polite company in my social circle, even if some might support the death penalty. It would be comparable, at the very least, to making racist comments, not something you do in front of other people.
LikeLike
BTW, apparently, in addition to the 18 states w/o a death penalty, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Arkansas, Oregon, Kentucky, and Washington all have official or defacto moratoriums on the death penalty. Other states, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, Montana, and the Feds have their procedures in various stages of review (as did Oklahoma). The states are struggling to find an publicly acceptable way of killing their death row inmates. The struggles are technical, the use of secrecy, compounding pharmacies, manufacturing drugs in house might succeed in those states where support of the death penalty, in principle, is overwhelming (Texas, some other southern states). I’m guessing that WA, CA, and OR are done with the DP, though there might be no official ban, and the DP might be revisited in particular cases.
LikeLike
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/clayton-lockett-and-the-worlds-deepening-death-penalty-divide/361482/
LikeLike
There are REASONS to be against capital punishment. For starters, you can -and should- oppose the death penalty if you are not like THEM -the true criminals correctly found guilty.
LikeLike