Thursday, May 24, 2007

Another botched execution?

Back in the days of drawing and quartering, burning people at the stake, boiling them in water, hanging, firing squad, etc. etc., it generally did not take an hour and a half to kill a person.

And it goes without saying -- but we'll say it anyway, because that's what we do around here, we say things -- it shouldn't.

But now comes the State of Ohio, which took somewhere around an hour and a half this morning to execute Christopher Newton after executioners had trouble locating a suitable vein.

The botched execution -- Ohio's second in two years -- led the ACLU of Ohio to call for an immediate halt to executions.

“What is clear from today’s botched execution is that the State doesn’t know how to execute people without torturing them to death,” said ACLU of Ohio staff attorney Carrie Davis. “Clearly our execution procedures, even though revised after last year’s botched execution of Joseph Clark, still do not guarantee an execution is humane.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

C'mon guys. You cannot be serious. The state took its time to get it right. The ACLU's screams of "torture" are beyond silly and, truth to be told, are an affront to real people who have suffered real torture.

This is not about getting this right--it's about ending executions.