Just Me

One of my classes is Critical Thinking.  As part of an exercise, I had to take a stance on capital punishment and then prove my position.  While capital punishment has nothing to do with a degree in business, the critical thinking aspect does.

Let me start by saying that I support the death penalty.  I think if you kill someone you should pay the highest consequence.  I understand there are times that people are convicted and they are innocent.  But with any system, there are failures.  If we stopped every process, procedure, or protocol based on the fact that there are failures, we’d have no rules or regulations.

Along with the exercise, I had to read an article about a man in Florida, Angel Diaz, who took an extra long time to die.  Opponents of the death penalty felt he unjustly suffered.  The length of the execution was due to a failure in the protocols for that state.  In Ohio, between 2006 and 2009 there were three cases where it took an inordinate amount of time for the prisoner to either be hooked up or to die.  In all cases, the failure stemmed from not finding a good vein or from improper administration of the drugs.

Opponents state that the prisoner has the right to a humane death, not one that causes pain.  It is alleged that prisoners are not receiving the proper anesthesia and when the drug that paralyzes the body is given, they are suffocating while awake.  If for some reason they make it through the first two rounds, it is said that the potassium chloride given to stop the heart creates burning and intense pain for the inmate.  According to a British medical journal, 43% of inmates from six states were given autopsies that proved the inmates may have been conscious.  MAY have been.  There is no definitive proof that they were.

There is an extreme lack of medical professionals willing or able to do the administering of the drugs in an execution.  I found conflicting information about whether or not this violates their medical oath and if they can lose their license.  One article stated that the AMA said it can’t be held against them while another said they could lose their entire careers.  It is known that they suffer extreme harassment from activists who oppose capital punishment.  As a result, people with little to no medical experience are administering powerful drugs.  Which leads to the prolonged death of inmate.

Another point not mentioned was the inmate’s health and medical history.  If you have a man who prior to imprisonment was a heavy drug user, there are bound to be issues with finding good flowing veins.  If you have a prisoner who is unhealthy, the same would apply.  Also, there are no reports that a doctor examined the prisoners to determine the effect of the drugs.  As with anything, every person metabolizes drugs (prescription or otherwise) in a different fashion.  I can knock back 10 Vicodin with little to no effect where my mom can’t take more than one without getting all goofy.  Some can smoke a bunch of meth yet another person may not be able to without overdosing.

After doing my research, I determined that I still am for the death penalty.  however, if we are going to have it, it must be done right.  Medical professionals, whether nurses or doctors, must be the ones giving the drugs.  There must be steps to determine a prisoner’s tolerance for certain types of drugs.

In my heart, I do not care if a man who has murdered a family feels pain when being executed.  It is what he gets.  But I also understand that under the letter of the law, he does deserve a humane execution.  Instead of abolishing capital punishment, it needs to be fixed.

It took me a bit to write my paper, these here are only my thoughts from my research.  But it has bugged me a bit and I wanted to see what others thought.