DPIC director assails our "thoroughly modern death penalty"

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has this notable commentary on a blog from The Hill publication.  The piece is headlined "A thoroughly modern death penalty," and here is how it starts:

On March 10, Ohio carried out an execution using a method that had never been tried before in the U.S. — a continuous dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital was administered until death occurred for Johnnie Baston.  Coincidentally, in an unrelated event, Ohio's electric chair was relegated to a museum, displayed along with artifacts from the Ku Klux Klan and a cage used to house mental patients.

Although the museum pieces were clearly meant to show the dark side of Ohio's discredited past, the newest lethal-injection method has been viewed as cutting-edge technology in the business of capital punishment. Ohio has execution dates scheduled right into 2012.

It is often hard to see the present with the same clarity that we apply to the past.  But it is likely that someday the idea of strapping people onto a table with deadly chemicals flowing through IV-tubes into their arms and watching them die will also be seen as barbaric.

Particular condemnation might be cast upon the practice of using untried methods on unwilling human subjects — an ethical breach made acceptable only because the recipients are already condemned to die.  Those who probe a little further might be shocked to find that the death row inmates were first kept in locked-down cells for 23 hours a day for 15 to 20 years before being led to the execution chambers.

Earlier this year, the smooth running of the death penalty was jolted by an announcement from the sole manufacturer of a key drug used by all death penalty states that it was ending production.  States scrambled to find sources of the drug, sodium thiopental, overseas or to find a substitute drug here in the U.S.  A dingy storefront housing a driving school in London proved to be a goldmine for several states desperate to keep executions on schedule.  In the back of the building was a tiny pharmaceutical distributor called Dream Pharma that willingly sent thiopental to the U.S. for executions.

Despite the fact that these drugs were never examined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (which constantly warns consumers about the dangers of counterfeit drugs from questionable sources), they were quickly used in executions in Georgia and Arizona. Great Britain was embarrassed and has taken steps to bar all future exports for a practice that they routinely condemn.  The FDA has been sued for its inaction in allowing the drug into the country.

But the experiments go on.  There are now four different methods of lethal injection being used in the U.S., even though there has yet to be a national review of what would be the most humane approach.  Some states like Ohio are trying single drugs, others like Texas are substituting pentobarbital as part of a three-drug regimen.  Since the inmates almost always die at the end of these routines, there is little medical evidence of what the inmate is experiencing.

UPDATE:  Writing in a similar vein, the New York Times on March 19 published this editorial headlined, "The Broken Machinery of Death."