"McALESTER, Okla. – A botched execution that used a new drug combination left an Oklahoma inmate writhing and clenching his teeth on the gurney Tuesday, leading prison officials to halt the proceedings before the inmate's eventual death from a heart attack.
Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of the state's new three-drug lethal injection combination was administered. Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.
The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state's top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings. Lockett died of a heart attack a short time later, the Department of Corrections said.
"It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched," said Lockett's attorney, David Autry."
Okla. inmate dies of heart attack after botched execution | Fox News
Does it rally matter "HOW" we kill the people we decide need to die?
It's funny, I just came from another thread where I was arguing for an absolute reading of one Amendment in the Bill of Rights, that I think is clear and unambiguous, and not open to any interpretation. A different Amendment is relevant to this discussion, which I see as being somewhat otherwise. The Eighth Amendment prohibits
“cruel and unusual punishment”. We've come to treat this as meaning that when we put a criminal to death, this must be done as cleanly and humanely as possible. I think this is well beyond anything that the Eighth Amendment was intended to mean. It seems much more reasonable to me to suppose that what it meant to prohibit (and should have been written more clearly to say so) was punishment that was out of scale for the crime. For example, torturing someone to a slow, agonizing death, for the crime of stealing a candy bar.
I have no problem with the idea of a murderer who caused his victim to suffer greatly before dying, being punished in a manner that causes him to suffer to a similar degree, before dying, and I doubt if those who wrote the Eighth Amendment would have a problem with that, either.
Even from the absurd “humane” viewpoint,I doubt if this execution was nearly as “botched” as it is thought to be. As a matter of normal medical procedure, patients are put under general anesthesia all the time, for surgery. They are literally cut open, so that surgeons may mess with their insides, possibly cut out damaged parts, and then sew them shut before they awake. I have to think that the experience of any significant surgery would be very painful and terrifying, without anesthesia.
I have to think that if the first step of Mr. Lockett's execution was carried out properly, he was solidly unconscious and unaware of anything that was happening to him after that—suffering no more than a patient would who is undergoing surgery. If he regained any consciousness before finally dying of a heart attack, then surely he suffered far more greatly than he would have if they had proceeded with the execution as planned, in spite of the alarming way in which Mr. Lockett's body was reacting to the drugs; or better yet, just had someone put a bullet in his brain (which is much closer, I think, to what they ought to have done in the first place).
Really, the only thing that I think truly went wrong with this execution was that the audience was treated to a more gruesome and alarming event than they expected. They expected and were meant to see a man peacefully fall asleep, never to wake again; and instead they saw him thrashing and writhing as if in great distress.