generalspeaking: Abhorrent Criminal Punishment

Wednesday, April 07, 2021

Abhorrent Criminal Punishment

"The United States is the only Western industrialized nation that continues to administer capital punishment."
"It also continues to use a method of execution that depends on material manufactured by multinational corporations."
"Put simply, association with executions, which are seen by much of the world as a barbaric American practice, hurts their business."
Ty Alper, clinical professor of law, UC Berkeley School of Law

"I think it's stupid. I think it's stressful. If it happens, I'll be heartbroken."
"This is more than revenge."
"This is torture. There needs to be a decision one way or the other."
Carmen Blackburn, daughter of Canadian Ronald Allen Smith

Ronald Allen Smith from Red Deer has been on death row in Montana since 1983 for the murders of two young Indigenous cousins.

United States

Ronald Allen Smith, 63, from Red Deer Alberta, is on death row and has been since 1998, in Montana. His crime: Murdering two young Indigenous cousins near East Glacier, Montana. He was high on LSD and alcohol at the time. He is a murderer. Two young men never lived long enough to attain the age that Ronald Allen Smith has; he took their lives from them in 1983. He has been waiting, waiting, waiting for almost four decades for his turn to die. And Montana is determined to give him that opportunity after a 15-year hiatus where it is now prepared to resume executions for death row inmates.

It is a matter of settling on the lethal drugs that are available for use. Lethal drugs that were once commonplace and commonly used are no longer available. Their manufacturers became unsettled and displeased at the reflection of lethal drug executions shining a light on their productive enablement of those executions so loathed by civil society. They have a reputation to uphold and it was bruised and battered by their product-association with human executions as punishment meted out by the state justice system.

Earlier in the year, Virginia announced itself the latest in a string of 22 states to abolish the death penalty. In Montana executions have been on pause since 2014 following a judge having determined that pentobarbital, a barbiturate, failed to meet the state's criteria holding that an "ultra-fast-acting" drug must be in use and capable of bestowing unconsciousness on the individual set to be executed. The last state execution took place in 2005, when the Supreme Court of the United States in 1976 found the death penalty to be constitutional, in reverse of an earlier court ruling.

Leading to a new piece of legislation in Montana that would allow for the "intravenous injection in a lethal quality" to be used to execute prisoners should it pass the State Senate. Across the United States drugs in use to execute prisoners vary widely. Before 2010, 30 of the 36 states using lethal injection favoured a three-drug cocktail consisting of sodium thiopental, to cause unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide, a paralytic; and potassium chloridem to stop the heart, leading to death.

Then, after 2010, sodium thiopental became difficult to obtain, mostly since Hospira, (now owned by Pfizer), stopped its production of the drug while other manufacturers prevented thiopental alternatives from being sold for executions. Rules in prevention of the export of drugs meant for execution use were put in place by the European Union. Leading to a chain reaction of state-level decisions to procure drugs or invent new cocktails for execution use.

Further modification of death penalty protocols with the use of compounding pharmacies to build the necessary drugs or to process a new drug cocktail to be used in the death chamber, saw some states further the process. Montana's choice was pentobarbital as an alternative to sodium thiopental. Other drugs, such as sedatives midazolam and etomidate are in use elsewhere. Arizona uses next-step drugs, like hydromorphone (an opioid) and Nebraska used fentanyl, while Texas continues to rely on a single dose of pentobarbital.

The issue is fraught, both with public disdain for the death penalty and the methodology of state executions, and with a gruesome miscarriage of plans when those being executed fail to react to the drugs chosen to kill them quickly and painlessly, by exhibiting obvious mental and physical anguish as they approach death, taking far too long to do so and reacting violently to the process. Which has resulted in some states deciding to change to alternate tried-and-true methods such as the electric chair which has, in the past, had its own memorable incidents of malfunction.