Для тех, кто читает по английски

Все, что касается смертных приговоров в США (by lethal injection) путем введения в вену смертельной дозы медицинских препаратов.

Сейчас здесь развязалась дискуссия на эту тему, после нескольких не очень удачно приведенных в действие смертных приговоров.

Хочется при этом напомнить, что в каждом Штате США свои законы. Это касается и смертных приговоров.

Но, вернемся к Lethal injection.

Lethal injection is the practice of killing a person using a lethal dose of drugs administered intravenously. Two methods of lethal injection exist today, one using a three-drug protocol and another using one large dose of a barbiturate.

Each state that employs lethal injection is legally required to have detailed protocols for its practice, and though the set of rules differ from state to state, the process of killing a condemned inmate varies little, and begins with the lethal injection team securing the inmate to a gurney and connecting him to an electrocardiogram (EKG) machine that monitors heart activity. Inserted into the inmate’s veins are two intravenous lines (one as a backup) that lead out of a separate infusion room, where members of the intravenous team monitor the initial harmless saline drip.

At the warden’s signal, the execution chamber is exposed to witnesses in an adjoining room, and in states that use the three-drug protocol the inmate is injected with sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, anesthetics intended to put the inmate to sleep. Presumably after a member of the intravenous team determines the inmate is sufficiently unconscious, he is then injected with pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate’s breathing. In most cases, the inmate’s consciousness is again checked, and finally potassium chloride stops his heart. In ideal circumstances, death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest while the condemned person is unconscious.

The process of lethal injection using just one drug follows nearly the same procedure, except the inmate dies from the one large dose of anesthetic, either sodium thiopental or pentobarbital.

Полностью

И, оттуда же.

Problems Associated with Lethal Injection

Two men from Georgia and one from Arizona were executed in 2011 using thiopental the states purchased from a DreamPharma in London. All three inmates reportedly kept their eyes open long after the sodium thiopental was administered, which indicates the drug was ineffective in sedating them. The inmates would then have experienced excruciating pain, but would have been unable to express it, while the two final drugs used in the protocol paralyzed them, stopped their breathing, and induced cardiac arrest. In cases such as these, protocols for assessing the consciousness of the inmates were not followed, calling into question how the rules can be reliably enforced. Without following the protocols, corrections officials unwittingly become torturers, as the drugs they administer cause inmates great pain.

Another issue surrounding lethal injection is the involvement of medical personnel. Though doctors and nurses are presumably the most qualified to administer drugs to an inmate, medical ethics preclude doctors from participating in executions. The American Medical Association issued a statement prohibiting physician involvement in capital punishment, saying it is contrary to the Hippocratic Oath and would erode the public’s trust in medical professionals. The American Nurses Association and the American Society of Anesthesiologists have both adopted similar positions. The result is that lethal injections are too often carried out by inexperienced technicians and orderlies, increasing the possibility of mistakes that can cause painful or drawn out executions.

A number of high profile executions have been botched when technicians inadvertently injected drugs into an inmate’s muscle or the execution team was unable to find a vein due to the inmate’s past intravenous drug use.

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И еще немного…

..о том же самом.

Нашел статью в The New York Times.

Terminally ill people who want to die can take drugs to end their lives peacefully. Ailing pets are put down humanely every day. Clearly, the technology exists to bring about a quick and painless death.

Why, then, do executions by lethal injection sometimes become troubling spectacles? The death in Oklahoma on Tuesday of Clayton D. Lockett, amid struggling and apparent pain, was not the country’s first bungled execution.

A number of factors have conspired to produce painful scenes in the death chamber, experts say: an ill-conceived drug formulation clung to by many states; the lack of medical expertise among people planning and carrying out executions; and, more recently, drug shortages that have pushed prison officials to improvise lethal cocktails and buy drugs from loosely regulated compounding pharmacies.

According to prison officials in Oklahoma, an intravenous line inserted into Mr. Lockett’s groin did not work properly and interfered with the flow of drugs. But doctors say the drugs themselves, three used in a certain sequence, are a deeper part of the problem, because two of them cause suffering if they are administered improperly. And those two drugs are not necessary.

Physicians have long known that large doses of single drugs — certain sedatives or anesthetics — can take a life painlessly, and with far less distress than the three-drug cocktail causes if the injection is botched.

Since 2010, more death-penalty states — Oklahoma not among them — have moved to use single drugs for lethal injection. Even critics of the death penalty say most of those executions have gone more smoothly than ones involving multiple drugs.

Barbiturates, including sodium thiopental and pentobarbital, infused into the bloodstream can quickly make a person go deeply unconscious, stop breathing and die. Dr. Mark J. Heath, an anesthesiologist at Columbia University and an expert on lethal injection, said that high doses of pentobarbital were routinely used to euthanize animals, from pet rabbits to beached whales.

Barbiturates alone have been used in 71 executions, in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and Washington, said Jennifer Moreno, a lawyer with the Death Penalty Clinic at Berkeley Law School.

Even though Dr. Heath opposes lethal injection, he said, “I have not seen a single complaint, not an unhappy warden or family or anybody, from the single-drug barbiturate approach.”

But he said that switching to a single drug would not fix all the problems with lethal injection because intravenous lines would still be needed. Starting them can be difficult and requires medical skill.

The three-drug combination used on Mr. Lockett was modeled on a plan first developed in Oklahoma in 1977 by Dr. Jay Chapman, then the state’s chief medical examiner. State lawmakers had asked him if there was a more humane way to execute people than methods like electrocution and the firing squad.

Dr. Chapman proposed a large dose of a barbiturate, sodium thiopental, followed by two other drugs: one to cause paralysis and halt breathing, and the other, potassium chloride, to stop the heart. His recipe was adopted by nearly every death-penalty state.

Полностью.

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