Book author slams Tennessee’s lethal injection drug choice for executions

On May 22 Oscar SmithTennessee, who was convicted of killing his wife and two young sons, was executed by a fatal injection. The state used chemical pentobarbital instead of three drugs used in the deadly injection protocol.

Fatal injection has been used in 98% of US executions since 1982.

Smith’s execution was postponed many times because the drugs to be used for fatal injection three years ago were not properly tested for bacterial toxins. Earlier this year’s execution was the first use of the death penalty since 2020, when Tennessee was executed by Nicholas Sutton’s electric shock. Smith has been in death for 35 years. Convicted Tennessean newspaper, in 1979, his grandmother, a high school friend and another man in the deaths.

Was Barbiturat Pentobarbital (used for all federal executions) injection was a humanitarian choice for an execution? In his first stop at Oak Ridge at the beginning of June, Corinna Barrett Lain, the author of the newly published book Tennessee, Compared to Pentobarbital’s “Water Board” injection of the newly published book.

The water board is a form of torture used during inquiries. Water is poured into a closed mouth and nose of a person tied to a blackboard and makes you feel like drowning. For an injected prisoner, this sensation may take five minutes before the heart stops.

Lain, the mother -in -law of Oak Ridge’s Nancy Highfill and SD Roberts and Richmond University Faculty of Law Professor Sandra Moore, said in his book that the deadly injections were “qualified and carefully carried out and usually a ‘human’ death.

He estimated that states preferred to use deadly injection to perform prisoners during the death, because he hidden and internalized the “physical power özen needed to cause the heart to stop. It produces execution blood by firing Squad; gas mask, cough, movement and spit; And the electric chair, the smell of burning meat. Lain said that witnessing the evidence of these physical forces could be traumatic for observers and prison guards.

“The legislature doubts that the American people had a stomach to see these terrible deaths,” he said.

Lain said he believes that fatal injection is the preferred form of execution, because the prison staff and others make the prisoner quietly, quickly and painlessly.

But is the deadly injection for the person during the death of death?

Lain, who tried to research and write his book for seven years, said that medical doctors first designed fatal injection protocols, and that pets made injections as they did to euthanasia (using pentobarbital). The American Medical Association, who was asked for help in prison executions, told the legislators that no doctor does not want to do anything with fatal injections because of medical ethics ”.

He said that the three drug protocols, which are widely used for fatal injection, were suggested by Jay Chapman, a medical examination of Oklahoma, who stated that he was not a medical doctor, anesthesiologist or a pharmacologist in 1977.

Chapman’s three -medicated cocktail proposal was a combination of sodium thiopentalin as an anesthetic, a paralitically pancuronium bromide.

Starting from 2011, in hospitals such as sodium thiopental, some drugs required for anesthesia before surgery were insufficient and prisons were difficult to buy. Pentobarbital states often selected alternative -seeking states.

“Looses the muscles on the face of the prisoner and then freezes them to give the impression of a beautiful, sleepy look.” He said. The problem also added that this medicine paralyzed the diaphragm, which finally paralyzed the muscle pumping the air. Medical experts say that the prisoner will soon experience the feeling of slow drowning and live burial. ”

According to a source, Oklahoma state, seeking a more human alternative to existing executive methods such as an electric chair, consulted Bill Wiseman. The Chapman protocol was widely adopted by many states, including Texas, who first used deadly injection in 1982.

In 2020, a national public radio investigation, Lain, between 1990 and 2019, including only Pentobarbital users, including nine states of fatal injection executives, he said. In 84% of these study cases, acute pulmonary edema evidence. In this disorder, fluid in the lungs accumulates, causing shortness of breath and potential respiratory failure.

Lain, another problem with fatal injection, many prisoners during the death of death, when the time of execution of the age, but also because of the age, but also because many of them have intravenous drug users, he said. This common situation makes it difficult for prison guards to reach the best vein of a prisoner because they will refuse to “push the syringes ..

Today, most guards said that the fatal injection of the remote room remotely, the seven -meter pipe injector on one side of the injector on one side of the injector on the other side of the injector, he said.

“This is not a bedside,” Lain added.

Brian Dorsey example

After the death of convicted criminals were executed by a deadly injection, he should endure before he died, a person of the audience “But they deserve it!” He said.

Im Let’s talk about it, La Lain said. “I have been writing about the death penalty for almost twenty years and I have always seen prisoners as people who have always committed terrible and unspoken crimes.” However, all prisoners during the death were not guilty of a crime, and the prisoners who committed murder when they were young turned into admirable people.

“According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, 4.1% of American prisoners during death are estimated to be innocent,” he said.

Then he spoke about a man who was convicted of double murder in Missouri. Seventeen years after he was sentenced to a death sentence, he was allowed to live in “Onur Yurt”. He trusted and appreciated hair cutting skills. For more than a decade, he was a prison barber for prisoners and prison staff, including the principal.

Im Imagine a condemned capital killer, a pair of scissors around his neck and a razor knife, Lain said Lain before telling Dorsey what happened.

He quoted an OP-ED statements in a newspaper that could not save the life of prison staff: “Mr. Dorase is a perfect barber and a gentle and respectful man.

Lain, more than 70 prison staff and officials, Missouri Governor, despite the petition to hire the punishment of Dorsey, the governor “and the prison guards who came to recognize and respected this man, said that he was forced to kill him”.

Lain said that the prison staff should endure the emotional cost of executing people and the death penalty in each state should carry the financial cost of the death penalty.

Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune reported that he was broken and owed to drug dealers on December 23, 2006, and called Dorsey Cash. His cousin Sarah Bonnie and his husband took him to his places where he drank and played billiard with some friends.

After everyone left, Dorsey used a shotgun to hit and kill Bonnies while sleeping, and then raped Sarah’s body. He then poured bleach on him and sold cash, car and some properties to pay drug debts. His family found his bodies the next day. Dorsey surrendered himself. He was executed on 9 April 2024.

“Arizona spent $ 1.5 million for three executions in 2022 and hit three of them,” he said, consulting a Ministry of Correction Official Wikipedia to determine that a drug would be injected.

Authorized, both Florida and Ohio officials have recently determined the total costs of the death penalty for the states of recent states, he said.

“Costs include two lawyers, one alleviating expert and a researcher for two cases, one to determine whether the accused is guilty, to determine whether the sentence will be death or life without conditional evacuation.” Usually final decisions are appealed by increasing the cost.

Florida assessment showed that the cost per execution was $ 24 million. The OHIO Legislative Service Commission concluded that punishing someone to death instead of life without a conditional evacuation may cost between $ 1 million and 3 million dollars per lawsuit.

The critics of the death penalty, such as the General Manager of Tennesseans for alternatives for death penalty, said the savings of eliminating the death penalty can be used to support the families of the victims of the perpetrators sentenced to imprisonment without conditional evacuation.

Lain began his book tour from other states at the Tennessee and Oak Ridge Public Library.

Oak Ridger’s news editor Donna Smith contributed to this story.

This article initially Oakridger: Author, Tennessee’s selection of fatal injection medication for executions SLAMS