Lethal injections. These drugs used to be easily available, but now they are not. It seems the drug manufacturers didn’t like the idea of using their drug as part of legalized killing. What is one to do in a country hell-bent on killing off its killers?
Midazolam Dosage Doesn’t Work
We could just put criminals in jail and throw away the keys. But that is too easy. Lawmakers in the let?s-kill-?em states started playing around with drugs trying to come up with a satisfactory alternative.
They thought that the sedative midazolam dosage would put the near-death inmates into a coma-like sleep. Then another drug would paralyze them. And a final drug would stop their hearts. No big deal.
But the death-row inmates in Oklahoma?took their case to the Supreme Court after jailors botched several executions.
Since the prisoners didn’t come up with a better alternative, they lost. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision to continue using the drug that may or may not work.
Liberals Dissent
In the dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that it,
?”Would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead to have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake.”
Why They Should Die
And our ever-favorite henchman Justice Antonin Scalia wrote,
“We federal judges live in a world apart from the vast majority of Americans. After work, we retire to homes in placid suburbia or to high-rise co-ops with guards at the door. We are not confronted with the threat of violence that is ever present in many Americans’ everyday lives.
“The suggestion that the incremental deterrent effect of capital punishment does not seem ‘significant’ reflects, it seems to me, a let-them-eat-cake obliviousness to the needs of others.”
Death Penalty Necessary?
Two of the liberal justices, Stephen Breyer and my hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that maybe we should reconsider capital punishment all together. Breyer wrote in his dissent.
“Rather than try to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one at a time, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.”
I actually think that living out one’s natural life in a room with no TV, computer, or human interaction would be far more painful than the death sentence.
Then there would be no more talk about bringing back the firing squad, implementing the rack, or suffering severely for a few minutes.
