Since the development of the lethal injection protocol by Oklahoma lawmakers in 1977, states across the US have adopted the method, presenting it as an effective, even humane alternative to the barbarity of the noose and the electric chair.
Yet after 1492 executions — the total number of lethal injections in the US so far, as indexed by the Death Penalty Information Center — it’s become clear that death-by-chemical-injection is a horribly cruel way to take a life. As anesthesiologist and physician Joel Zivot argues in a new op-ed for the New York Times, it’s well past time we start treating lethal injection as the brutal crime against humanity that it really is.
Zivot would know, as a doctor for Christa Pike, a prisoner who was scheduled to be executed last week. He warned Pike’s attorneys “that she had medical conditions that could lead to a painful and cruel death by lethal injection,” findings which Pike’s lawyers attempted to use to argue against her death by lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital, but to no avail. Pike’s execution went forward, though complications due to those very medical conditions led the state executioners to dose the woman twice — which she survived, while suffering horribly.
“After the pentobarbital was administered, her arms turned purple,” the anesthesiologist wrote. “Her lawyers report blistering and burning at the injection sites. This suggests that at least some of the pentobarbital entered the tissue of her arms rather than her bloodstream because the intravenous lines failed.”
