Lethal injection creator: Maybe it's time to change formula

[Bolt_Gundam510]

By Elizabeth Cohen

CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- When Gary Gilmore was choosing between the firing squad and the electric chair in 1977, Dr. Jay Chapman remembers discussing the inhumanity of each option with his colleagues at the Oklahoma state medical examiner's office.

"We said this is really ridiculous. We kill animals more humanely than we kill people," said Chapman.

But Chapman, then the chief medical examiner in Oklahoma, supported the death penalty. So when state legislators asked him to come up with a more humane alternative, he went to work.

For three weeks Dr. Chapman contemplated the best way to kill someone, the best combination of drugs that when injected, would take life swiftly and painlessly.

He came up with a lethal three-drug cocktail, and to his great surprise, over the past 25 years, 37 states adopted it nearly to the letter. But now, after concerns that instead of causing an instant death it sometimes provides a slow, painful, one, Chapman has rethought whether his formula is optimal.

"It may be time to change it," Chapman said in a recent interview. "There are many problems that can arise ... given the concerns people are raising with the protocol it should be re-examined."

A recent study found sometimes inmates given lethal injections slowly suffocate while conscious but unable to communicate. Judges have ruled the procedure unconstitutional in two states, and 11 states have stopped using lethal injection.

One problem was illustrated last year when it took nearly 90 minutes to execute Joseph Clark, who'd murdered two people in Ohio. Witnesses reported that Clark raised his head off the gurney and said repeatedly, "don't work, don't work," and moaned and groaned as he struggled with prison officials.

News accounts of the execution also quoted Clark as asking, "Can you just give me something by mouth to end this?"

Chapman's protocol involves using an anesthetic to render the inmate unconscious; a paralytic to stop the inmate's breathing; and a drug to stop the heart.

One criticism has been that the anesthetic, sodium thiopental, doesn't completely anesthetize all inmates.

"Now there are other agents that work much faster and much easier," Chapman said, specifically pointing out an anesthetic called Diprivan. "Absolutely [Diprivan] would be better [for an execution]. If you're wanting to give someone something so there's no sensation, no awareness of what's going on, that's the drug."

The other major criticism of the lethal injection method has been that if the prisoner isn't completely unconscious, he will feel the asphyxiation caused by the second drug, pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes all muscles, including those needed to breathe.

When asked why he included the asphyxiation drug in his formula, Chapman answered, "It's a good question. If I were doing it now, I would probably eliminate it."

He added he wouldn't change the third drug, potassium chloride, which is highly effective at stopping the heart and causing cardiac arrest.

Chapman still stands by his formula as a sound -- if not perfect -- method of execution. "It works if it's administered competently," he said. "But you have to have some skills to do it. You have to have the ability to find a vein and mix the drugs, because [some of them] come as a powder."

He added that he's heard reports that in one execution, the IV needle was inserted incorrectly, pointing toward the prisoner's hand rather than his body. "You have to be an idiot to do that," said Chapman, who's a forensic pathologist.

He also criticized prison officials for inserting the IV inside the death chamber rather than beforehand. "It seems ridiculous to me to be trying to find a vein when everyone's inside the chamber, feeling nervous and fiddling around trying to find the vein," he said. "That's just ludicrous to me."

He also cited another "incompetency:" the execution of Angel Nieves Diaz last year that took 34 minutes because IV needles were inserted straight through his veins and into the flesh in his arms. Then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush subsequently suspended all executions.

Even proponents of the death penalty say they have doubts about whether the three-drug formula is the best way to execute someone. "I think it's a dumb way to do it," said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that advocates the death penalty. "It's a complicated procedure, and open to criticism."

Instead, Rushford said he supports using carbon monoxide, which he described as being "simple, fast, and painless."

Chapman disagreed with that assessment. But he had another idea. "The simplest thing I know of is the guillotine. And I'm not at all opposed to bringing it back. The person's head is cut off and that's the end of it."

Source: CNN HEALTH

[toyo]

omg, idiotic moron he is!!!!

guillotine, huh?

not a bad death at all...

sometimes americans are just plain.... ..... i dont want 2 say 1 more word, coz we're all human and make mistakes and americans have smart men between them. but fuckin guillotine... idiotic fool...

[3NIGM4]

i couldnt think of a worse job than injecting an inmate or cleaning a head that roll off the room...

[apcmiller]

The guillotine is an instant death as long as it goes the whole way through, a new magneticly driven supersonic blade would probably be the quickest death someone could get.

On the other hand if you are going to have the death penality I suggest that it be slow, painful, and TELEVISED if you really want to use it as a deterant to committing crime. Boiling in oil while wearing a padded wet suit, locked in a room with fire ants while covered in honey, slow exsanguinated while swimming with sharks, being locked in a room with nothing but 500 lbs of beef jerky and dying of dehydration etc. ect.......you know stuff that would really make people think twice about committing a capital crime punishable by death. I have NO PITY for some one who takes another persons life for any reason even self defense or accidental.

[masterripper]

wtf is up with toyo associating that one guy with all of us, wtf!, just because that guy wouldnt mind bringing back the guillotine doesnt mean we all think it would be a good idea to bring it back, that aside, personally i think the drug is perfectly fine the way it is, it is fast, swift, and gets the job done "Humanely" oh and if it inflicts a little bit of pain WHO GIVES A SHIT, its not like were using this drug on harmless little pigs and cows to put them to sleep painlessly before their eaten, these are fucking sickos that have gone on killing sprees across multiple states killing men and raping women before beating the shit out of them and leaving them for dead, these guys SHOULD feel some kind of pain, why should these sickos get to kill ppl in painful ways, yet in turn, they get to die a painless death, wtf, im with miller, i feel NO sympathy for these dicks who kill and steal and rape and terrorize and w/e else you can think of, they deserve to die, and if they feel some pain from the drugs, well then they get what was coming to them.