Questioning lethal injection
What appears to be a rather horrifically botched execution in Arizona should give additional pause to those (me included) who continue to support the death penalty. This and other significant problems with lethal injection — including the growing evidence that it probably isn’t anywhere close to painless — means that it’s simply a barbaric practice that really ought to be ended posthaste. Given ongoing problems — and the existence of many surer, less error-prone methods of execution — there’s no reason to continue it. If shooting, hanging and other forms of execution make people queasy, well, that’s fine; the death penalty should be used very rarely and only for people who have committed truly horrific acts.
Insofar as some people who want to abolish the death penalty are trying to use the problems with lethal injection to advance their goal, I’d say, “all power to them.” Problems with the way we execute people are, indeed, a pretty good reason to rethink the death penalty overall. I’m more of the “mend it don’t end it” school, and on that front, NYU’s Robert Blecker has some very good ideas. They’re well worth reading.
