Post by CCADP on Apr 16, 2006 14:37:22 GMT -5
EDITORIAL: Let the killing stop. (Editorial)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2006 The News & Observer
Apr. 14--We love our pets and treat them as part of our families. So when the vet says the time has come to end their lives, we expect their drug-induced deaths to be gentle and painless. The human beings on North Carolina's death row do not get the same compassion. Many would say that as convicted killers, they're not entitled to it. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that the protocol of injections used to kill condemned prisoners may not be as quick or painless as long assumed.
Willie Brown, Jr., 61, is scheduled to die in Central Prison next Friday. His crime was the murder of convenience store clerk Vallerie Ann Robertson. In 1983 Brown robbed the store in Williamston where Robertson worked, took her to a logging road, forced her to lie down and shot her six times. No matter the outcome of his pending appeal, he needs to be kept away from civilized society for the rest of his life. But that appeal has thrust North Carolina into the national debate over methods used to end the lives of condemned prisoners. U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard has ordered that Brown's execution can take place only if medically trained personnel are on hand to ensure he is fully sedated before paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs are administered. Research has shown that unless the sedation is conducted properly, the subsequent drugs may cause the prisoner to suffer terrible pain and the agony of suffocation. Ensuring that the sedating drug is properly administered is easier said than done. The American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association specifically, and understandably, say their members should not participate in executions in any way. That would include monitoring vital signs to make sure a prisoner is unconscious. The state, determined to execute Brown on schedule, has turned to technology in an effort to meet Howard's demand. Use of a device called a bispectral index monitor has been proposed to ensure that Brown is fully unconscious before the paralyzing and fatal drugs are injected. It's a macabre world where the government kills to show that killing is wrong and where technical discussions of the mechanics of the death penalty cloud the dubious ethics of the act. The questions now swirling about the use of lethal drugs merely tilt the scales of justice more toward a temporary moratorium on executions.
The issues that argue for a moratorium grow ever more compelling: inadequate legal representation by inexperienced or unskilled trial attorneys, unethical behavior by some prosecutors, advances in crime scene investigative techniques that call verdicts into question, the documented racial and socio-economic inequities in sentencing and, above all, the irreversibility of the sentence all argue for a halt to executions. The General Assembly, wisely, already has a study under way of inequities in the capital punishment system. But a moratorium would provide an even better chance to assess the ultimate fairness and morality of executions. Discussions about which drugs and which machines are the most efficient, or the least painful, are but a diversion obscuring the real issue.
Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2006 The News & Observer
Apr. 14--We love our pets and treat them as part of our families. So when the vet says the time has come to end their lives, we expect their drug-induced deaths to be gentle and painless. The human beings on North Carolina's death row do not get the same compassion. Many would say that as convicted killers, they're not entitled to it. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that the protocol of injections used to kill condemned prisoners may not be as quick or painless as long assumed.
Willie Brown, Jr., 61, is scheduled to die in Central Prison next Friday. His crime was the murder of convenience store clerk Vallerie Ann Robertson. In 1983 Brown robbed the store in Williamston where Robertson worked, took her to a logging road, forced her to lie down and shot her six times. No matter the outcome of his pending appeal, he needs to be kept away from civilized society for the rest of his life. But that appeal has thrust North Carolina into the national debate over methods used to end the lives of condemned prisoners. U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard has ordered that Brown's execution can take place only if medically trained personnel are on hand to ensure he is fully sedated before paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs are administered. Research has shown that unless the sedation is conducted properly, the subsequent drugs may cause the prisoner to suffer terrible pain and the agony of suffocation. Ensuring that the sedating drug is properly administered is easier said than done. The American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association specifically, and understandably, say their members should not participate in executions in any way. That would include monitoring vital signs to make sure a prisoner is unconscious. The state, determined to execute Brown on schedule, has turned to technology in an effort to meet Howard's demand. Use of a device called a bispectral index monitor has been proposed to ensure that Brown is fully unconscious before the paralyzing and fatal drugs are injected. It's a macabre world where the government kills to show that killing is wrong and where technical discussions of the mechanics of the death penalty cloud the dubious ethics of the act. The questions now swirling about the use of lethal drugs merely tilt the scales of justice more toward a temporary moratorium on executions.
The issues that argue for a moratorium grow ever more compelling: inadequate legal representation by inexperienced or unskilled trial attorneys, unethical behavior by some prosecutors, advances in crime scene investigative techniques that call verdicts into question, the documented racial and socio-economic inequities in sentencing and, above all, the irreversibility of the sentence all argue for a halt to executions. The General Assembly, wisely, already has a study under way of inequities in the capital punishment system. But a moratorium would provide an even better chance to assess the ultimate fairness and morality of executions. Discussions about which drugs and which machines are the most efficient, or the least painful, are but a diversion obscuring the real issue.
Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.