"It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep." So wrote mine foreman Martin Toler, Jr. shortly before his death from carbon monoxide poisoning in the Sago mine accident a little less than a year ago. Although no one comes back to tell us how much pain they suffer in death, this is very close. The miners who knew they were close and had seen others go before them told us that carbon monoxide is a painless death. See Charleston Gazette story here.
California used the gas chamber as its method of execution until the execution of Robert Alton Harris in 1992. In that case, there was a flurry of last-minute litigation as attacks on the gas chamber, withheld until the eleventh hour, were unleashed in a ploy to stop the execution. See Gomez v. U.S. District Court, 503 U.S. 653 (1992). Justice Stevens wrote in dissent, "The unnecessary cruelty of this method of execution convinced Arizona's Attorney General that that State should abandon execution by gas in favor of execution by lethal injection. His conclusion coincides with that of numerous medical, legal, and ethical experts."
Listening to "ethical experts" got us where we are today. The problem wasn't with the gas chamber itself; the problem was the choice of gas.
Lethal injection is a quasimedical procedure involving needles, syringes, and mixing chemicals. These actions require skills that a typical corrections officer does not have. No skill is needed to turn a valve and allow gas into a chamber.The much-miscited American Veterinary Medical Association report has this to say about carbon monoxide:
Advantages—(1) Carbon monoxide induces loss of consciousness without pain and with minimal discernible discomfort. (2) Hypoxemia induced by CO is insidious, so that the animal appears to be unaware. (3) Death occurs rapidly if concentrations of 4 to 6% are used.Disadvantages—(1) Safeguards must be taken to prevent exposure of personnel. (2) Any electrical equipment exposed to CO (eg, lights and fans) must be explosion proof.
Those disadvantages seem to be quite minor. Carbon monoxide monitors are well established and readily available. Electrical engineers can surely handle problem 2.
We never should have gone to lethal injection in the first place, and it is high time to correct the error.
Leave a comment