It's too bad the companies that make the drugs for lethal injection are kept secret to avoid protests. I'd really like to know the cost of the process. I'd be willing to bet the difference between lethal injection and firing squad is easily several thousand dollars.
By now, kind of. But until recently a supply of sodium thiopental, pancuronium and potassium chloride was something like a hundred dollars or so per execution. But Hospira, which used to manufacture the sodium thiopental used for executions, stopped making it so that it couldn't be used in lethal injections. That's why many states are switching to pentobarbital, which is a lot more expensive.
Exactly. I'm willing to bet most prisons pay a hefty sum for those cocktails, and not just anyone is allowed to come in, stick a needle in the perp's arm either. Those medical professionals probably charge a good amount for doing such an ill-viewed task.
Lethal injections aren't carried out by medical professionals, they're done by prison staff (or in some places, like Florida, a private citizen, who
could be a medical professional, but the AMA is really not okay with that. They get $150 for it.) A doctor usually has to confirm the death of the prisoner, but that's generally the extent of their involvement.
By what I'm sure is a complete coincidence, in many executions the dosage of sodium thiopental is too low.
I too go back and forth on the death penalty. But, I also see something inherently wrong with a family thinking, "Wow, this guy is dying slowly before my eyes. He's in a LOT of pain. He's suffering tremendously. Wow, am I satisfied."
I mean, I can't even imagine that. It's beyond my understanding. Isn't that the mentality of certain serial killers? To receive satisfaction from watching others in pain? Tortured? Killed?
There's something missing in my head that connects that with "justice."
Maybe I'm broken. Who the heck knows.
I think it's kind of a mixture of revenge fantasy, "eye-for-an-eye"-style justice and hope that it might make it hurt less and provide closure. Only it doesn't. When I was a baby my mother was killed in a car accident. For a while, when I was a broody teenager, I wanted to kill the guy who killed my mom and I wanted it to hurt. He caused me pain, so he deserves some in return, why does he get to live, like that. I thought it'd make me feel better. A couple of years ago I found out the guy had died an apparently pretty unpleasant death from cancer. It didn't do anything for me. I asked my father, who'd suffered a lot more than me, whether it made him feel any better. He said no, she's still dead.
Whether you kill them or let them rot in prison or they die from disease or whatever, it doesn't undo what they did and it won't make it better. The pain is not going to stop.
