By Kate Randall:
Following botched Florida lethal injectionSee also here.Executions on hold in two US states
18 December 2006
On Friday, executions by lethal injection were suspended in Florida following a botched execution, and a federal judge in California ruled that the state must overhaul its death penalty methods, in effect halting executions there.
These developments have focused increased scrutiny on the gruesome lethal injection procedure, which is the method of choice in 37 US states.
In the Florida case, it took 34 minutes and a rare second injection of deadly chemicals for prison authorities to execute Angel Nieves Diaz on December 13.
Death usually occurs within 15 minutes, and the individual is unconscious and motionless within 3 to 5 minutes.
In Nieves Diaz’s case, witnesses reported seeing him moving as long as 24 minutes after the initial injection, including grimacing, blinking, licking his lips, blowing and attempting to mouth words.
As lethal injection is currently practiced, the prisoner is given a deadly cocktail of three poisons: one to deaden pain, the second to induce paralysis and the third to stop the heart.
A study published last year in the British medical journal the Lancet, however, concluded that the first drug, sodium pentothal, can wear off before the inmate loses consciousness, subjecting the condemned individual to excruciating pain before the third drug, potassium chloride, causes a heart attack.
The medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Nieves Diaz following his execution, Dr. William F. Hamilton, said that it appeared that the lethal-injection needles punctured through both of his veins, sending the poisons into the small tissues of the arm, dispersing them.
“It really sounds like he was tortured to death,” commented Jonathan Groner, associate professor of surgery at the Ohio State Medical School and a death-penalty opponent, to the Associated Press.
“My impression is that it would cause an extreme amount of pain.”
Because medical professionals overwhelmingly refuse to participate in the lethal injection procedure on ethical grounds, the intravenous needles are for the most part put in place by prison personnel.
While in a hospital setting the average success rate in inserting an IV is about 1 in 6, when the difficult procedure is attempted by prison staffers trained solely for execution, the results can be disastrous, as proved in Nieves Diaz’s case.
Exclusion of Jews and Blacks from California death penalty juries: here.
US states with most death penalties had most lynchings in the past: here.
“Unjust, Cruel and Irrational” The United States of Punishment
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@mindspring.com chocoano05
Sat Dec 23, 2006 12:34 pm (PST)
December 18, 2006 COUNTERPUNCH
“Unjust, Cruel and Irrational”
The United States of Punishment
By WILLIAM BLUM
2.2 million Imprisoned … “We’re Number One! USA! USA!
USA!” … 7 million — one in every 32 American adults —
either behind bars, on probation, or on parole … When it
comes to sentencing, let me tell you, people, and pardon
my language, the United States is one hell of a tough
mother fucker … beginning with mandatory minimum
sentences … there are tens of thousands of young men
rotting their lives away in American prisons for simple
possession of a drug, for their own use, for their own
pleasure, to enjoy with a friend, no victims involved. Do
you think a person should be in prison if he hasn’t hurt
anyone? Either physically, financially, or in some other
real and serious manner? Jose Antonio Lopez, a legal
permanent resident with a family and business in South
Dakota, was deported back to Mexico a while ago because of
a cocaine charge — Sale? No. Use? No. Possession? No …
He told someone where they could buy some. Another man was
sentenced to 55 years in prison for three marijuana deals
because he was in possession of a gun each time, which he
did not use or brandish. Possession of a firearm in a drug
transaction requires a much stiffer prison sentence. Four
former attorneys-general and 145 former prosecutors and
judges wrote in support of a lighter sentence for this
man. The presiding judge himself called the sentence
“unjust, cruel and irrational”, but said the law left him
no choice.
On December 1, a court in the Netherlands convicted four
Dutch Muslims of plotting terrorist attacks against
political leaders and government buildings. The heaviest
sentence for any of them was eight years. On December 13,
a priest was convicted of taking part in Rwanda’s 1994
genocide by ordering militiamen to set fire to a church
and then bulldoze it while 2,000 people seeking safety
were huddled inside. The International Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Considerably lighter sentences than in the United States
are generally a common phenomenon in much of the world. In
the US, the mere mention of the word “terrorist” in a
courtroom will likely bring down 30, 40, 50 years, life in
prison, on the defendant’s head, even for only thinking
and talking of an action, an Orwellian “thoughtcrime”,
with nothing concrete done to further the plan.
Colombian drug traffickers, British Muslims, and others
accused of “terrorist” offenses strenuously fight
extradition to the United States for fear of Uncle Sam’s
merciless fist. They’re the lucky ones amongst
Washington’s foreign targets; they’re not kidnapped off
the street and flown shackled and blindfolded to secret
dungeons in shadowy corners of the world to be tortured.
For those who think that no punishment is too severe, too
cruel, in the War on Terrorism against the Bad Guys, it
must be asked what they think of the case of the Cuban
Five. These are five Cubans who were engaged in the United
States in the 1990s trying to uncover information about
anti-Castro terrorists based in Miami, some of whom
shortly before had been carrying out a series of bombing
attacks in Havana hotels and may have been plotting new
attacks.
The Five infiltrated Cuban-American organizations based in
Miami to monitor their actions, and they informed the
Cuban government of their findings. The Cuban government
then passed on some of the information to the FBI. And
what happened next? The FBI arrested the five Cubans.
The Cubans were held in solitary confinement for 17
months; eventually they were tried, and in 2001 convicted
on a variety of charges thrown together by the government
for the occasion, including murder (sic!) and conspiracy
to commit espionage (probably the first case in American
judicial history of alleged espionage without a single
page from a single secret document). They were sentenced
to prison terms ranging from 15 years to life. But the
federal government’s lust for punishment was still not
satisfied. They have made it extremely difficult for their
Cuban prisoners to receive family visits. Two of them have
not seen their wives and children since their arrest in
1998; the other three have had only scarcely better luck.
Yet another glorious chapter in the War on Terrorism.
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military
and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a
guide to the World’s Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
Comment by Administrator — December 24, 2006 @ 1:58 pm
Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:58:49 -0400
From: hapi22
Subject: *ALL the black men in ALL the jails and prisons in America have NOT….*
As for Bill Bennett’s statement that if all black babies were aborted,
the crime rate would go down, we might recognize that ALL the black men
in ALL the jails and prisons in America have NOT stolen as much money
from the American public as the Frist family — all by itself — did.
And ALL the black men in ALL the jails and prisons in America have NOT
fleeced the American public out of as money as Halliburton has with its
overcharges on their no-bid contracts in Iraq.
And ALL the black men in ALL the jails and prisons in America have NOT
done the American public out of as much money as Paul Bremer,
administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, seems to have
“lost” in Iraq — which is about $8 billion.
Just because these rich white guys — with ties to Bush — do not use a
gun to steal our money does NOT mean they aren’t stealing our money on a
regular basis. They are.
Black men go to jail for stealing a couple hundred dollars worth of
stuff from the local 7-11, but the rich, white, well-connected guys who
steal from us run the senate and the Pentagon, and the entire United
States government, for that matter.
Think about it.
Comment by Administrator — December 27, 2006 @ 12:09 am
Blacks who kill whites likeliest to be executed,
study finds:
Bias in the U.S. justice system continues even after
sentencing, a sociologist says.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070730_execution.htm
Comment by Administrator — August 3, 2007 @ 1:13 am