Botched Execution Fuels Death Penalty Opposition

Government can't even kill people right.

Lawyers for an Arizona double-murderer who took two hours to die from a lethal injection called on Thursday for an outside review of what they called a "horrifically botched execution" that has prompted new calls for the United States to end the death penalty.

The complications in executing convicted killer Joseph Wood on Wednesday in a procedure his lawyers complain was cloaked in secrecy came after two other lethal injections went awry earlier this year in Ohio and Oklahoma.

Comments

[LarryA]

I'm against the death penalty because I think the government is incompetently executing innocent people.

That said, it mystifies me how something like this can happen when there are so many accidental overdoses.

Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the past two decades and have become the leading cause of injury death in the United States. Every day in the United States, 113 people die as a result of drug overdose, and another 6,748 are treated in emergency departments for the misuse or abuse of drugs. Nearly 9 out of 10 poisoning deaths are caused by drugs.
http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecr.....facts.html

It's not like we're short on ways to kill someone.

[gaoxiaen]

Maybe they could use something proven to work like... I dunno... heroin?