Death penalty is torture

By David Love

Monday, Aug. 4, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

The horrific execution of a death row inmate in Arizona provides all the proof we need that the United States must abolish the death penalty now.

On July 23, Arizona executed Joseph Wood by lethal injection. Under normal circumstances, the procedure should have taken 15 minutes. But it took one hour and 57 minutes for Wood to die. According to witnesses, he gasped, snorted and gulped for 90 minutes.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., weighed in, calling the execution “torture.” McCain is a torture victim, so he should know.

Wood’s horrible death is by no means the first example of a botched execution using lethal injection, which is now the most common form of capital punishment in the country.

The two-drug combination used in Wood’s case — hydromorphone, a painkiller that halts breathing, and midazolam, a sedative — was used in the lengthy, botched execution in January of Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire, who apparently snorted and gasped for 26 minutes before dying.

And in April, Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma suffered from a heart attack and died after writhing in pain during a bungled execution. The previously untested cocktail of drugs used to kill Lockett included the sedative midazolam followed by vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxer, and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

President Barack Obama, who termed Lockett’s botched execution “deeply troubling,” called for a review of the federal death penalty.

In response to the Wood execution — the third botched execution in the country this year — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer expressed concern, placed a temporary hold on executions and ordered a review.

But there really is nothing to review.

The states and the federal government need to get out of the death penalty business.

Death penalty proponents have long promoted one form of torture or another as a safe, humane, painless and antiseptic form of execution.

Lethal injection, like its predecessors, had been touted as the painless solution, a promise no one could keep. With a shortage of chemicals because of a European embargo on drugs used in executions, states have resorted to using untested drugs and under-regulated compounds under a veil of secrecy.

“Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a dissent in Wood’s death penalty case. “But executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality.”

Kozinski, a President Ronald Reagan appointee, added: “The state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf. If we as a society cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by a firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all.”

Joseph Wood died a gruesome death.

But then again, the death penalty itself is gruesome.

We can’t abide any more brutal, savage executions.

David Love is a freelance writer and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.