This execution could see 'surgery without anesthesia'

April 9, 2024

Rooms understandably fall quiet when I talk about the execution I witnessed.

The case and the condemned were relatively unremarkable. He said he didn't do it. The state said he did. There was no celebrity-social-media campaign to save him from dying by lethal injection. So the state of Mississippi put him to death in the spring of 2012 as I, two of his attorneys and his spiritual advisor looked on from a concrete room that was narrow and deep.

When people ask why I volunteered, I give a version of the same responses: Where capital punishment is usually talked about in the abstract, I had a chance to make it more real, for myself and my readers. And because being a journalist is a privilege, I tell them and myself, it was my responsibility to bear witness where most others would never be able to, I tell them and myself.

As it turned out, it would be one of the last executions carried out in Mississippi for nearly 10 years because the companies that manufactured the lethal chemicals used to paralyze and induce cardiac arrest in human beings refused to sell those drugs for those purposes.

States like South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama also had unplanned moratoriums on executions as their legislatures worked to devise alternative methods for carrying out death sentences.

Although many states were forced to pause executions and executions are becoming increasingly rare, the politics of stoking crime hysteria is sparking new conversations about punishment from New York City's subways to the Bible Belt.

Let's talk about it.

— R.L.

How Brian Dorsey could die tonight

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Missouri will execute a man named Brian Dorsey less than 12 hours after you receive this email. Under that state's execution protocols, should a suitable vein not be found to pump the death cocktail into Dorsey's arm, members of the execution team would be permitted to perform "surgery without anesthesia," he argued through court documents.

Specifically, executioners would make an "incision that could be several inches wide and several inches deep" and use "forceps to tear tissue away from a vein that becomes the injection point."

Missouri officials argue that this is a rare and if necessary pain relief medication will be available. Gov. Mike Parson denied Dorsey's clemency request over the objections of more than 70 prison staff members and a former warden.

Only five states carried out death sentences in 2023, Missouri among them along with Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama. Executions might be increasingly rare; the appetite for them is not.

In November 2022, the state of Alabama botched the execution of a man named Kenneth Smith when executioners failed to insert an IV into his arm before his death warrant expired — the very thing Brian Dorsey's lawyers fear might happen tonight in Missouri. Fast forward to earlier this year when Alabama successfully used the previously untested method of using nitrogen hypoxia to suffocate Smith.

The United States is divided on the question of the death penalty. Twenty seven states have death penalty laws on the books; the others do not. About half of Americans support the death penalty and think it's usually applied fairly; the other half opposes it and believe the practice is inherently inequitable.

Those who support the death penalty believe it deters crime and is an important tool in the law-and-order toolbox.

Even the National Institute of Justice, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, acknowledges that there is no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Furthermore, data from 2020 show that non-death-penalty states have a 44% lower rate of homicide compared to death penalty states.

One reason for Americans' stubborn support for the death penalty could be due to the fact that the rhetoric of skyrocketing crime and out-of-control criminals is so pervasive in our elections, even in places we think of as being liberal.

From a messaging standpoint, "crime is up" is a better talking point than "it's complicated." Donald Trump, for example, has said that on President Biden's watch, "violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city," despite law-enforcement data that refutes the claim. Even in Democratic primary elections, candidates have traded blows over public-safety concerns.

Thus, concern about crime is one of the top issues on voters' minds as they cast votes in this year's primary elections and, presumably, when they head back to polls for the November general election.

Here's a list of national organizations that advocate for ending the death penalty:

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty · Death Penalty Action

· Death Penalty Information Center · Equal Justice Initiative · Equal Justice USA · Innocence Project · Journey of Hope . . . from Violence to Healing · Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) · National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty · People of Faith Against the Death Penalty · Witness to Innocence

Source: executinggrace.com

Data points were made

Americans' views on the death penalty are evolving. A little, anyway.

—Last fall, by a 50% to 47% margin, more people said they believe the death penalty is applied unfairly than those who believe it is fairly applied. It was the first time since Gallup started polling on the question did more respondents say the death penalty is unfair.

—A majority of Americans still support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, however. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they are in favor of the death penalty compared to 44% who opposed, according to the poll published in October 2023.

—Support for the death penalty was at its lowest point in 1966, when only 42% of Americans supported the practice. In 1967, federal courts suspended all executions and required states to address constitutional issues with their death penalty statutes.

—Despite Americans' clinging to their support of the death penalty, executions are decreasing. Between 1999 and 2022, exe­cu­tions declined by 82%. During the same period, the number of death sen­tences in the U.S. declined by 92%.

—Race is a key indicator in influencing whether a defendant receives the death penalty, with people found guilty of murdering white people more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered Black people.

—Meanwhile, the death penalty is abolished in all European nations except Russia and Belarus, which carried out an execution in 2022. Before that, you'd have to go all the way back to 1997 to find a European nation that executed someone. That was Ukraine.

— The United Nations' high commissioner on human rights routinely condemns executions carried out in the U.S., most recently in Alabama, which put to death a man named Kenneth Eugene Smith by using the untested method of nitrogen gas which Commissioner Volker Tür said "may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

As always, never hesitate to inbox me with thoughts, to chat or to rant.

Peace,

R.L.

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