California s lethal injection plan is proven to be inhumane



By Ty Alper
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 06/27/2009 08:00:00 PM PDT

On Tuesday, California prison officials will hear public comment on 
their proposed procedures for conducting lethal-injection executions. 
Although officials claim their goal is to achieve humane executions, 
the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation plans to stick with 
a three-drug protocol that risks just the opposite.
The protocol is so fraught with danger that it would be illegal to 
use to euthanize a dog or cat in this state.
It involves the administration of three drugs: first, an anesthetic; 
second, a drug that paralyzes the inmate; and third, potassium 
chloride to stop the heart.
Activists have denounced the practice of paralyzing inmates before 
executing them, and for good reason. Executioners are typically not 
qualified to administer anesthesia, let alone monitor the inmate's 
reaction to the drug throughout the execution. If the inmate is 
paralyzed and the anesthesia fails, he will feel the excruciating 
burn of the potassium chloride as it scorches through his veins, but 
will be unable to indicate he is in pain. His death will appear 
peaceful, and the public will never know that yet another execution 
has been botched.
Such a procedure would be illegal if used on animals in California. 
Even when accompanied by anesthesia, paralytic drugs are generally 
banned in euthanasia because of the risk that failed anesthesia can 
go undetected in a paralyzed animal. For that reason, a shelter 
worker who administers a paralytic during animal euthanasia is guilty 
of a misdemeanor and subject to a $2,000 fine and a year in jail. 
That's been the law in this state since 1978.

For the past three decades, the primary method of animal euthanasia 
in California has been a simple, one-drug procedure: the overdose of 
a barbiturate called sodium pentobarbital. This method causes a 
painless death, usually within a few minutes. When it revised the law 
in 1998 to outlaw another dangerous euthanasia method — carbon 
monoxide — the California Senate Judiciary Committee wrote that 
"there is a general consensus that a lethal injection of sodium 
pentobarbital is the most humane way to euthanize unwanted dogs and 
cats."
California is not alone. Euthanasia by use of a single drug — sodium 
pentobarbital — is the preferred method of the American Veterinary 
Medical Association, the Humane Society of the United States, and 
every major animal welfare organization in the country. The vast 
majority of states — 42 out of 50 — prohibit the use of paralytics in 
animal euthanasia.
If this method of killing is unconscionable for animals, why does 
California insist on using it to execute people? Prison officials 
cannot claim ignorance. There are decades, even centuries, of 
evidence that these drugs have the potential to inflict a painful and 
horrifying death.
In 1868, a Swedish physiologist described paralytic drugs as "the 
most cruel of all poisons." In the 1970s, military officers in the 
Philippines, Brazil and Uruguay used paralytics to torture political 
prisoners. The Humane Society's current training manual states that 
its members have a "moral and ethical duty" to end the practice of 
injecting animals with paralytic drugs.
Some Californians believe that inmates should suffer the same painful 
death that they inflicted on their victims. We cannot deny the grief 
and rage that accounts for these emotions, but the Constitution 
requires humane executions. It is time to abandon a drug that has 
been used to torture both people and animals, and has been rejected 
by veterinary and animal welfare communities for decades.


TY ALPER is the associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the 
University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and is the author of 
"Anesthetizing the Public Conscience: Lethal Injection and Animal 
Euthanasia." He wrote this article for the Mercury News.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12700611