States running out of lethal injection drugs
Honestly, this seems pretty unconstitutional to me - though the Supreme Court has upheld it.
States are running out of lethal injection drugs because the major drug companies refuse to produce and sell them. So they are turning to unregulated "compounding pharmacies" and passing laws to hide the entire process from the public. If you have to pass laws to hide what you are doing...
The reality is simple that the death penalty is generally speaking outdated. Though there are people in the world who deserve it (or much, much worse) - it's use in our judicial system is really a difficult issue. The majority of those put to death are in the South, and a lot of those can be argued to have some kind of racial bias built in.
So what are states doing? Some regulators have brought up the concept of using the firing squad - which as Utah will tell you is a terrible idea. And no - we don't need it. We have thousands of murders a year in the US and have executed 1,362 people since 1976. Did we execute the 1,362 worst people in the last 50 years? Absolutely not. A number were innocent and many more were no worse or better than the 100,000 other murderers in that time.
What should we do? We can't safely put people do death with drugs because no one will make them. Other methods are generally seen as either spectacles, barbaric, or overly expensive. The killings themselves are questionable at best due to our less than perfect judicial system (23 appeals or no). Perhaps it's a good time to re-evaluate what we are doing?
Let's have a real discussion around the PRACTICAL sense of whether this makes any sense at all. To me, it doesn't, whether or not you believe there are those out there who deserve death.
States are running out of lethal injection drugs because the major drug companies refuse to produce and sell them. So they are turning to unregulated "compounding pharmacies" and passing laws to hide the entire process from the public. If you have to pass laws to hide what you are doing...
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| Should we really be doing this anyway? |
So what are states doing? Some regulators have brought up the concept of using the firing squad - which as Utah will tell you is a terrible idea. And no - we don't need it. We have thousands of murders a year in the US and have executed 1,362 people since 1976. Did we execute the 1,362 worst people in the last 50 years? Absolutely not. A number were innocent and many more were no worse or better than the 100,000 other murderers in that time.
What should we do? We can't safely put people do death with drugs because no one will make them. Other methods are generally seen as either spectacles, barbaric, or overly expensive. The killings themselves are questionable at best due to our less than perfect judicial system (23 appeals or no). Perhaps it's a good time to re-evaluate what we are doing?
Let's have a real discussion around the PRACTICAL sense of whether this makes any sense at all. To me, it doesn't, whether or not you believe there are those out there who deserve death.
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