As we all know, the Constitution of the U.S. includes a prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” A week ago today the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought to the court to decide whether lethal injection used in death penalty cases violates that prohibition.
There has been a string of legal challenges to lethal injection in recent times. All have called into question whether the three-drug combination used in most executions exposes inmates to the risk of cruel and unusual punishment.

Persons opposing the method say that the combination of drugs can mask an inmate’s suffering.
The lethal three-chemical cocktail given to death row inmates consists of sodium thiopental, which causes unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide, which results in paralysis, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
An article in the San Jose Mercury News says that “Courts throughout the country have issued conflicting rulings, with some states, including California, putting executions on hold. The Kentucky case reached the high court after that state’s Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures, opening the door for the justices to tackle the issue. The outcome will have a direct impact on California, where San Jose U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel put executions on hold in 2006, concluding that the state’s execution process is ‘broken’.”
Analysts of the high court say that there is no way that its present conservative justices are going to abolish lethal injection. What they may very well do, those analysts say, is require certain new precautions and procedural changes to ensure that lethal injection mess-ups occur much less frequently.
Hmmm. How about this for a “mess-up”?: Lethal injection kills people.
The whole issue of killing people as a means of stopping people from killing people is what the Supreme Court needs to decide — and what the American people need to decide. It is incomprehensible to me that so many Americans still seem to support the death penalty as an appropriate measure.
Since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, there have been 929 executions by lethal injection, 154 by electrocution, 11 by the gas chamber, three by hanging and two by firing squad. according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. I find it beyond sad that a species that considers itself to be evolved (talking about human beings here…ahem….) could do such things. I just find it beyond sad. It says so very much about the level to which we have — and have not — evolved.
Somewhat better news is that executions in the United States last year fell to the lowest level (42) in over a dozen years. Most states have held off on them after the Supreme Court decided in late September to rule on the lethal injection case. That ruling is expected by June.
Conversations with God says that the death penalty is not the mark of a highly evolved society. I should say that is putting it mildly. Many countries — indeed, if I am correct, most — have abolished the death penalty. The U.S. should follow suit.