Lethal Injection Update
Submitted by deathwatch on Tue, 04/17/2007 - 7:11pm
Visit my blog to view a brief filed on behalf of five North Carolina death row inmates (Jerry Conner, James Campbell, Archie Billings, Marcus Robinson, and James Thomas).
A little background. You may recall that the whole execution train got derailed back in January when it was determined that the State's lethal injection protocol was never properly approved by the Council of State. The Council of State quickly OK'd said protocol. The problem? Administrative agencies like the Council are required by law to follow certain procedures, including holding public hearings about proposed rule changes, with which the Council failed to comply. Since then, the attorneys for a number of death row inmates have filed suit in the Office of Administrative Hearings to demand that the Council do things right. The Council responded by filing a motion to dismiss the suit, saying that they don't have to follow the procedures. Above is the response of the inmates to that motion. Included are several appendices related to attempts made by the attorneys to gain access to the Council of State and prior litigation regarding the lethal injection protocol.
I will grant you that administrative law is not the most exciting thing in the world. Here is why this matters - the hearing that the Council of State should have held would have been the only opportunity for public comment on and revision of the flawed lethal injection protocol. The Council refused to hear from anyone other than the State's attorneys and ignored evidence that the protocol puts inmates at an unconstitutional and unconscionable risk of dying an agonizing death. The people of North Carolina have been denied any input into this ultimate punishment to be carried out on their behalf.
The Department of Corrections is immune from administrative law regulations. Up until recently, they've been pretty much free to make up the execution protocol as they go along. For a while, the DOC was administering half of the barbiturate after the drugs that paralyze the muscles and stop the heart - when the inmate was already dead, and long after the anesthetic could have served its intended purpose. Jonas Salk they're not. There are aspects of the current lethal injection protocol that are similarly nonsensical. Someone with a hand in designing the protocol ought to have some idea what they are doing. Quite simply, the Council of State needs to be fully informed before it makes its decision.
Given that not following the rules is what got them into this mess in the first place, you would think the State would be a little more careful. It's clear that the State just wants these men dead, by any means necessary. Having a lethal injection protocol that doesn't inflict unnecessary torture on the condemned is not about giving undue dignity to cold-blooded killers. It's about maintaining our own dignity, lest we become cold-blooded killers ourselves.
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This debate about whether we're inflicting pain
while we kill someone is hard for me to grasp. My belief is that a society insane enough to engage in capital punishment should have to confront the reality of its actions. Those passing such judgments and allowing them to stand should have to personally witness the results of their choices.
Mike Easley should have to stand in the town square and watch the people he declines clemency to hang at high noon. He should have to watch them fall through the trap door and see their heads ripped off. He should have to watch them get shot by a firing squad and see the blood spurt from their skulls. So should the juries and judges that find in favor of execution. And the prosecuting attorneys who go for the death penalty. They should all have to watch. Every time.
I've had this view for a good long while.
While I agree that we
While I agree that we shouldn't be killing people in the first place, I think that if we do, there's no reason to make the inmate suffer (more).
It's my understanding that the prosecuting attorneys regularly do watch executions. Surely Mike Easley did so during his execution-laden time as NC Attorney General. It doesn't seem to have had a great deal of effect on him.
Whether we're talking about lethal injection, the gas chamber, or drawing and quartering, the person most affected by the pain and horror is obviously the inmate. Why should s/he have to endure extra pain to make a point to witnesses who probably won't get it anyway?
My concern about public executions is their potential to further devalue human life. Sure, some death penalty supporters don't want to personally witness an execution, but there are also a lot of people out there who would relish the opportunity to observe such suffering. I've heard stories about the Klan holding tailgate parties in the prison parking lot during executions of black inmates (not in NC). I don't think that sort of behavior would be limited to extremist groups if we started stringing people up at DBAP.