Botched execution revives death penalty debate

The United States of America’s seemingly endless, often futile, search for the painless, bloodless method of executing prisoners continues. The latest horrifying chapter occurred in Tennessee on Sept. 30, when the state tried to kill convicted murderer Christa Pike by lethal injection.

It didn’t work. Pike survived two dosages of pentobarbital. She was rushed to a hospital where, according to her lawyer, she was receiving “lifesaving care”.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee has cancelled upcoming executions, but he isn’t moving away from capital punishment.

Lee said, as quoted in the New York Times: “The people of Tennessee have determined that capital punishment is the appropriate sentence for the most heinous of crimes. The people of Tennessee expect those sentences to be carried out in a manner that’s not only legal and constitutional but effective, and that didn’t happen.”

The U.S. is an anomaly among first world nations regarding capital punishment. Only Japan and Singapore use it, too, but nowhere near as often as the U.S. In fact, according to Amnesty International, the U.S. is in the top five of death-penalty-using nations, along with such paradigms of compassionate democracy as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Despite this, the U.S. sees itself as a kind-hearted, decent nation; so, if it’s going to execute people it must do it, well, decently. First, one must be gentler than the condemned was to his/her victims. To do this, American know-how has worked to find the most painless method.

Until the late 1800s, hanging was the method of choice. Ideally, the neck would snap and the condemned would die instantly. Except sometimes it didn’t work and the hanged person would be slowly strangled. It was the age of electricity, so it was then suggested people could die in the electric chair, first used in August 1890. It took two jolts to kill William Kemmler. Though a deputy coroner said he’d rather watch 10 hangings than another execution, the electric chair became the execution method of choice.

Kemmler wasn’t the only one to suffer. In 1985 it took Indiana authorities five jolts and seven minutes to kill William Vandiver. Other victims burst into flames.

The gas chamber was supposed to be an improvement. But, in 1992, it took 10.5 minutes for Arizona to execute Douglas Eugene Harding, who was seen to be thrashing against his restraints.

Of course, there are painless, instant methods — the guillotine and the firing squad. But the Americans want it bloodless. (Though it’s worth noting that South Carolina brought back the firing squad in 2022.)

So, in the 1980s many states began using lethal injections — certainly bloodless but hardly painless. In his book Gruesome Spectacles, Austin Sarat examined 8,776 executions between 1890 and 2010. Of the hangings, 3.12 per cent were botched. Compare that with 7.12 per cent of the lethal injections and none of the firing squads.

The problem with lethal injections is that no one can predict how anyone will react to any chemical infusion. Consider the plethora of potential side effects listed at the end of any pharmaceutical commercial. Before being brought to market, medications are tested on volunteers. But how can you ask people to test a product that’s intended to kill them, possibly painfully?

Thus, everyone who gets a lethal injection is a guinea pig.

To make things worse for prison authorities, some pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell their products for executions. Perhaps companies that work to save lives don’t want their merchandise used to kill people. More cynically, perhaps, they fear lawsuits from the families of botched execution victims.

So, state authorities prepare cocktails of poisonous substances without knowing how effective they’ll be.

In 2024 Alabama started killing prisoners with nitrogen gas. Kenneth Smith was the first prisoner to be executed this way. Prison officials told Smith’s victim’s family that he would take a few breaths and then die. According to the New York Times, after two or three breaths Smith started struggling, trying to get off the table.

Insanity, according to the cliché, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

How many more botched executions must there be before American prison authorities realize this method is as least as brutal as any other execution method? Their never-ending efforts to develop a kinder, gentler mode occurs because, in their hearts, they know it’s wrong.

On the American Civil Liberties Union website, Brian Stull wrote “How is it possible that, in 2014, state after state is utterly failing at lethal injection? How can it be, given modern medicine, that it could take hours instead of minutes for states to kill someone? The answer is that the death penalty has no place in this country.”

Twelve years later he could ask the same questions — unfortunately.

Arthur Chapman is a Winnipeg writer.