A Painless Death

Last week the Florida Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection was NOT cruel and unusual punishment. The 6-1 opinion rejected a request for a hearing on the study sought by Clarence Edward Hill, who was set to die Jan. 24th, which suggested that during the process the inmates were still semi-concious but unable to respond to the extreme pain involved when the diaphragm no longer functioned (Pancuronium bromide) and then when the potassium chloride stopped the heart.

I have spent enough time in nursing homes to be able to imagine what it is like to have extreme pain and not be able to respond to it... not be able even to move into a more comfortable position. It helped me understand that there are worse things than letting an older person quietly and comfortably pass... and that worse thing is using medical technology to keep them alive and in pain. I've also wondered if somewhere nursing homes and doctors are keeping people alive for financial reasons (you can't make money off a corpse), but that is a different blog for another time.

While death row is a different situation, I have no desire to place these people in a nightmare scenario.

State Sen. Kyle Janek (Republican, Houston), an anesthesiologist, addressed these questions to my satisfaction. He writes:

It is important to understand that sodium pentothal is given to an inmate 1st to render him completely unconscious and insensible to pain. For example, a normal surgical dose for a man weighing 220 pounds would be about 300 milligrams. Yet for lethal injection, the inmate receives 3 grams - or 10 times the normal amount based on body weight.
http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/TXInjection.htm

It sounds to me as if the Left's version of the pro-life movement, the anti-death penalty crowd, was in this case grasping for another straw.

Update: Our old buddy Justice Kennedy has decided to waste everyone's time and grant a stay. I guess precedents for killing are sacred to liberals only when it involves killing a baby.