It Seems Competence Isn't Enough

Turns out that it wasn't incompetence.  Which is maybe the bad news.  AP reports.

Intravenous lines were placed correctly during the execution of an Arizona inmate whose death with lethal drugs took more than 90 minutes, a medical examiner said Monday.
Incorrect placement of lines can inject drugs into soft tissue instead of the blood stream, but the drugs used to kill Joseph Wood went into the veins of his arms, said Gregory Hess of the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office.

That's happened before.  Most recently, apparently, in Oklahoma where the folks trying to kill Clayton Lockett missed the veins and pumped the drugs into his body tissue.  It didn't work, and, if the reports are accurate, he died of a heart attack after they gave up for the day the effort to kill him.  It's not all that surprising that they screw up that way.  The killers, after all, aren't medical professionals.  They aren't anesthesiologists.  They're prison guards.

And all too often they demonstrate, as they did in Oklahoma in April, and as they have several times in Ohio, that they're incompetent.

But not in Arizona.  Not this time, anyway.  Not for Joseph Wood last week  Nor for Dennis McGuire in Ohio back in January.

They did what they were supposed to do.  Followed orders to stick needles in the veins and pump them full of drugs that will kill.  And yet.

Hess also told The Associated Press that he found no unexplained injuries or anything else out of the ordinary when he examined the body of Wood, who gasped and snorted Wednesday more than 600 times before he was pronounced dead.
An Ohio inmate gasped in similar fashion for nearly 30 minutes in January.

So what happened?  What is it that led to the cock ups in Ohio and Arizona? 

I mean, this shit is supposed to work.  That's the promise, after all.  No, we're not experimenting with new murder techniques.  We're using top medical advice for clinical executions.  Sure we can't use the drugs we want because nobody'll sell them to us.  (And what's wrong with those drug manufacturers that want their drugs to be used for healing not killing?)  But these are supposed to be just as good. Midazolam followed by hydromorphone.  The combo in Ohio and Arizona.  

And see, there's the answer.  Because if it isn't incompetence, then it's the drugs.   Which are, after all, third string.  Plan C, as it were.

Tennessee's bringing back the chair which states stopped using because it was sure as hell looking like the courts were all going to start finding the chair to violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  

Other states are talking about the firing squad or maybe hanging.  Maybe it's time to return to drawing and quartering?  Or crucifixion.

Because if the horrors of what happened to Joseph Wood and Dennis McGuire weren't due to incompetence, then there's a bigger problem.  

Even when we know what we're doing, it doesn't work. 

Is It Really Botched If He Ends Up Dead?

An hour and 57 minutes.

He gasped some 650 times for all but the last 17 minutes or so.

They gave him the fucking drugs a second time because, well, who knew if he'd ever die.

It was torture said John McCain who knows a thing or two about torture.

Smooth sailing said Jan Brewer and the AG and Kent Scheidegger and a spokesman for Arizona's DOC who all declared, with the certainty of the ignorant, that he was sound asleep through the whole thing and felt absolutely no pain or discomfort even if it took longer than they'd expected.

The family of his victims complained that it wasn't nearly ugly enough, and how dare people wish it were easier on him.

What if the federal judge had ordered it stopped and him revived?  Could they have done it? Apparently, they could have.  And could they then have tried to kill him again?  Nina Totenberg pointed to Ohio where the Supreme Court has agreed to answer that question in Romell Broom's case.

Like Ohio, and like Oklahoma, and like every other state where lethal injections go horribly wrong despite repeated declarations that it was all cool, they'll investigate and review.  And like all those states, they'll guarantee that the investigation will be independent because it will be conducted by the same people who ordered and carried out the killing.  Inspector, investigate yourself.

And like those states, and Missouri and Georgia and Texas and Louisiana and everywhere else, they'll explain that it's vital that they kill and insist that the who and how and where they get the drugs must be secret.  Because the people demand killin' but would stop it if they knew who was involved.

We once executed at high noon.  In the town square.  So the people could see the consequences and learn.  The killing was to be as John Bunyan says in a different context in Pilgrim's Progress, both "caution and example."  But of course the people partied.  And the pickpockets thrived.  

So they moved it inside.  Hidden away.  Did it at midnight.  Away from the throng, which just wouldn't learn.  And then earlier in the day, because why pay overtime or force the killers to miss time with the wife and kids afterwards?

I've said before that if we're going to do this, we should own up to it, give up the pretense of gentle killing and necessary murder.  Forget the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  Admit that it's by God murder.  Have them tied down and gnawed to death by rats in Yankee Stadium. Put it on pay per view. Then we'd have to allow that it's no more than revenge.  Really just blood sport.  

Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, dissenting from that court's refusing en banc review of a decision of a panel of that court staying the execution so that Wood could get information about the drugs Arizona was going to use and where they came from and like that so he could determine whether his killing would likely prove to be torture (citation deleted, emphasis added). 

Whatever happens to Wood, the attacks will not stop and for a simple reason: The enterprise is flawed. Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful—like something any one of us might experience in our final moments. See  But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should it. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.
If some states and the federal government wish to continue carrying out the death penalty, they must turn away from this misguided path and return to more primitive—and foolproof—methods of execution. The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos. And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps. The firing squad strikes me as the most promising. Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time. There are plenty of people employed by the state who can pull the trigger and have the training to aim true. The weapons and ammunition are bought by the state in massive quantities for law enforcement purposes, so it would be impossible to interdict the supply. And nobody can argue that the weapons are put to a purpose for which they were not intended: firearms have no purpose other than destroying their targets. Sure, firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood. If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn't be carrying out executions at all.

He's OK with that splatter.  I'm not.  But then, I'm opposed to the whole enterprise.  We're better than that.  Or we're supposed to be.  That's why we hide it.  Why we pretend to medicalize.  Why it's supposed to be kinder and gentler.  Really, this is for your own good.

Which is, of course, bullshit.

His name was Joseph Wood.  He was murdered by the State of Arizona.  It took an hour and 57 minutes.  He gasped some 150 times during all but the last 17 or so of those minutes.  They had to drug him a second time.  They said it all went really well.  They lied.