According to US media reports on October 2nd, this wasn't even the first such incident in Tennessee this year.
Austin Sarat, a professor of law and political science at Amherst College, said: “Certainly the percentage of people surviving executions has increased as states have become increasingly overwhelmed with lethal injection.”
For about a decade and a half, pharmaceutical companies have restricted the use of their products in executions. Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, have opposed or banned members from participating in this practice.
Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, commented: “This is an extremely sophisticated, error-prone process, carried out by untrained individuals using drugs purchased on the black market. From the outset, it was a recipe for disaster.”
According to Sarat, approximately 7% of executions by lethal injection between 1890 and 2010 resulted in incidents. His data was published by the Death Penalty Information Center. An execution fails when it doesn't proceed as planned, leading to delays, unnecessary pain, and sometimes horrific consequences. This figure is higher than the 3.2% failure rate of all execution methods combined.
Since 2010, the failure rate of lethal injections has steadily increased, reaching nearly 8%, including a series of cases similar to that of death row inmate Pike, who survived the lethal injection.
Restricted pharmaceuticals
Mr. Sarat believes this increase stems from difficulties with drug suppliers.
Lethal injection was developed in Oklahoma in 1977, when authorities sought execution methods that seemed less brutal than hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, and electric chair. It was first used in Texas five years later. The initial procedure involved injecting the anesthetic sodium thiopental, followed by pancuronium bromide, a paralyzing agent, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart. All were administered in much higher doses than commonly used.
In 2010, pharmaceutical companies selling these drugs for medical purposes began facing pressure from the British human rights organization Reprieve. This organization launched a campaign to prevent European companies from exporting the drugs to the US for use in executions.
Initially, some companies objected, arguing that they could not control the distribution of products after selling them to suppliers in the US and that these drugs had vital medical uses. However, they eventually implemented the restrictions. The UK and Europe also adopted export controls, and then US pharmaceutical companies followed suit.
This led to shortages of the drugs used in lethal injections, forcing states to source them elsewhere, including from compounding pharmacies.
Pharmacies that manufacture compounded medications often produce drugs that need to be tailored to each patient, such as when a patient is allergic to an ingredient in a medication provided by the manufacturer. These facilities are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration like traditional pharmaceutical companies.
In 2015, as more and more states turned to compounding pharmacies, the Compounding Pharmaceutical Alliance announced it would not encourage compounding of drugs used in lethal injections. However, the organization stated that it acknowledged the right of each pharmacist to decide whether or not to dispense a drug based on personal, ethical, and religious beliefs.
Some drug dispensing facilities that agreed to supply drugs for executions have been found to have a history of extremely poor performance; therefore, the drugs supplied for lethal injection may be incorrectly dosed or improperly stored, affecting their effectiveness.
Medical organizations objected.
Even before the first lethal injection was performed, the American Medical Association declared that doctors should not participate, and this ban remains in place in the Code of Medical Ethics.
The code of conduct states: “Each individual’s view on the death penalty is a personal moral decision. However, as members of a profession whose duty is to protect life as long as there is hope, physicians are not permitted to participate in an execution that is not legally permissible.”
The American Nurses Association also stated that since the early 1980s it has maintained the position that nurses should not take on any role in the execution of a person in custody. In 2010, the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians stated that it strongly opposes the involvement of emergency medical technicians, paramedics, or other emergency medical personnel in executions.
The identity of the person administering the lethal injection is usually kept secret. There might be a medical team responsible for placing the IV line, followed by another team that pushes the syringes.
In many places, these individuals may be correctional officers with no medical expertise. They press the syringes to deliver medication from an intermediate chamber through a system of tubes approximately 2.1 meters long.
According to data provided by the Death Penalty Information Center, one of the most common reasons for failed lethal injections is the inability to establish an intravenous line.
That's what happened in the previous failed execution in Tennessee in May. The execution of Tony Carruthers was halted after officials spent more than an hour trying to find a vein but failed. The governor granted Carruthers a one-year stay of execution.
Search for alternative methods
The original lethal injection procedure in 1977 was altered due to problems with drug supply and failed executions. Pike, 50, sentenced to death for murder in 1995, was given two doses of pentobarbital, a sedative.
Pike is currently intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious at a hospital in the Nashville area.
It is unclear why the execution failed. Ms. Lain suggested that there may have been an error in administering the medication, causing it to go into the tissue instead of the vein; the medication may not have been effective enough; or simply that each person reacts differently to the medication, with only one type of drug being used this time instead of three.
Faced with problems with lethal injection, states are turning to alternative methods. In April, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would expand execution methods, including firing squad. In 2024, Alabama began using nitrogen asphyxiation, a form of suffocation.
Source: https://baotintuc.vn/vi-sao-cac-vu-hanh-quyet-bang-hinh-thuc-tiem-thuoc-doc-that-bai-ngay-cang-nhieu-o-my-post1391085.html
