Latest news with #SecretsoftheKillingState
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Restarting executions in TN amounts to subjecting death row prisoners to torture
Thumbing its nose at my argument in The Tennessean, in 2019, that 'There are many facts that clearly show the death penalty should be obsolete,' Tennessee is set to execute folks again. As The Tennessean reported recently, the state 'has announced plans to resume capital punishment with a new, more vague protocol for lethal injection — [one even vaguer than the previous protocol the state had a track record for botching. Now it will use] one drug called pentobarbital.' This will satisfy only the animalistic desire for violently fatal retribution which civilized societies around the world long ago outlawed; they hoped the U.S. someday would follow suit, or, at least, that individual states like Tennessee would start to shutter their barbaric death penalty regimes; that's why in that 2019 essay I insisted: 'We must be honest about the death penalty's repugnance.' I advanced then — and resubmit — that 'In these times, we must embolden noble, courageous people who exist in America, people with integrity, to call lethal injection the vile torture it is.' Tennessee has plenty of prison space to incarcerate the 'worst of the worst,' saving Tennesseans a whole heap of money in lawyers' fees and other costs of maintaining Tennessee's barbaric machinery of death (think of the officials who get paid to be involved, the lethal drugs, etcetera). And as The Tennessean astutely reported, there is a real 'lack of transparency over how the state is securing' the pentobarbital it will use, and therefore questions about whether it could be of shoddy quality. This should be especially alarming as witnesses of pentobarbital executions have described condemned prisoners 'gasping for air before they died and autopsies showing their lungs were filled with fluid akin to drowning' (and the horrific torture known as 'waterboarding' ). The Tennessean rightly observed that despite Trump's Justice Department's gung-ho approach to the death penalty, 'former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland halted the use of pentobarbital for federal death row inmates after it was unable to determine whether the drug causes 'unnecessary pain and suffering.'' However, it's critical Tennesseans understand that legal experts who study executions have come to much starker conclusions about pentobarbital. In a new book called 'Secrets of the Killing State' — about 'the untold story of lethal injection' — Corinna Barrett Kain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, minces no words in her scholarly work that anyone who wants to know the truth about lethal injection must read. She concludes that 'pentobarbital executions are torturous in their own right.' About Lain's book, Bryan Stevenson, author of 'Just Mercy' and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative wrote: 'A compelling, thoroughly researched, brilliantly written investigation of how governments kill prisoners whose very lives may depend on the moral outrage of a nation that dares to look more closely at lethal injection and the death penalty. Disturbing, devastating, an urgent must-read.' As I've argued before to Tennesseans in this newspaper: 'Abolishing the death penalty requires morality, but it also requires people of conscience to speak honestly — and ask tough questions — in support of an unshakeable belief that should be uncontroversial in a civilized, principled society: The death penalty is racist, barbaric, and immoral.' And too: 'There exists too much mental illness, and far too much death and suffering in America already' and so all Americans, including Tennesseans, need to insist the state stop throwing scarce resources away on the death penalty in an immoral pursuit of 'justice.' Pardon my reliance on my past publications in The Tennessean on this subject of great importance — to Tennesseans who care about human rights — but it needs repetition: 'The constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment bears no asterisk for crimes committed by society's most despised.' Scheduling a flurry of lethal injections using pentobarbital is the wrong decision for Tennessee. It has already led to a flurry of litigation — with much more expected — and the amount of taxpayer money that is being used by the state to defend this torture will only mount. It is important to let the politicians who represent you know that this is not what you want. And it is not what you will vote for going forward. Tell them you want a government that focuses on improving the quality of life for its citizens—not one focused on secretive protocols for torturous killings. Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on "X"/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Scholars call death penalty drug pentobarbital 'torturous' | Opinion
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Yahoo
Luigi Mangione Faces Potential Torturous Fate As Pam Bondi Seeks Death Penalty
President Trump's no-nonsense Attorney General Pam Bondi has made it clear she wants Luigi Mangione executed for allegedly committing murder — and, if she gets her way, the 26-year-old Ivy League grad faces a torturous fate, TMZ has learned. TMZ interviewed University of Richmond Law Professor Corinna Lain, who provided us with a road map of what Luigi can potentially expect if he is federally convicted of stalking and murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The federal prosecutor presents aggravating factors to the court, and the jury must unanimously agree on those factors before the judge decides whether to impose the death penalty. In federal cases, the death penalty typically results in lethal injection. Lain, an expert in capital punishment who wrote a book called, "Secrets of the Killing State, The Untold Story of Lethal Injection," tells TMZ ... Luigi would first be strapped to a gurney in a death chamber and an executioner will find a vein and insert a catheter. She says some inmates are pricked multiple times as the executor searches for a vein ... mainly because they are ailing drug users with bad veins ... but Luigi is young and spry and this doesn't seem to pose an issue. Once the catheter is inserted in the vein, Lain says non-medical prison guards carry out the execution with syringes from another room called the "execution anteroom." This room is next to the execution room and the two spaces are connected by a tube running through a hole in the separating wall ... the tube is used to carry drugs from one room to the next. On one end of the tube are syringes with the lethal drugs ... and the tube runs into the catheter needle in the prisoner's arm. Guards push down on the syringes, which deliver Pentobarbital -- a euthanasia drug -- to the prisoner's body. The drug immediately floods the heart and then the lungs. After a couple minutes, the prisoner falls unconscious, and it could take up to 18 minutes before they die. Even if the prisoner is unconscious and drugged to oblivion, Lain tells us the prisoner could still be feeling pain ... but can't respond to it. She says scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates it's very likely the drugs cause extreme pain and needless suffering ... in other words, torturing people to death. Lain says lethal injection sometimes causes Acute Pulmonary Edema, which occurs when fluid seeps into the lungs within seconds and minutes ... making it hard to breathe ... this is life-threatening. Another issue ... the non-medical prison guards carrying out the execution. Lain says the guards are not medically trained and when they administer the drugs by pushing down on the syringe they can sometimes push too hard, delivering too much of the substance too fast, thus blowing the vein and causing it to collapse. If this happens, she says the drug spills into the surrounding tissue ... creating a big problem. In one case, Lain says the prisoner woke up in the midst of his own execution in pain ... and in another, she says the prisoner had huge chemical burns on both arms with his skin sloughing off. This can't help Luigi sleep at night. 🤷🏽♂️
