Humanitarian Concerns About Methods of Execution

Two hands are using a syringe and needle to pull medication from a small glass vial.
The lethal injection may not be as ethical as it is made out to be. In this image, two hands are using a syringe and needle to pull medication from a small glass vial. Source: Yahoo! Images

 

Content Warning: semi-graphic descriptions of death.

In my most recent article, I approached the issue of capital punishment by taking a broader, more philosophical stance on the ethics of taking the life of a person who has committed a crime. In this article, I will dive into the human rights issues we face when we take a closer look at the methods used to execute convicted criminals. 

While researching for my last article, I fell into a rabbit hole of the methods that States use to execute people. Many states still have firing squads, gas chambers, and hangings as alternatives to lethal injection. Many states have single-drug injections where the person being killed feels their lungs fill with liquid and experiences the paralysis of their respiratory muscles, effectively choking and drowning them in their own bodies. Even during multi-drug lethal injection, it is probable that inmates are still able to feel their death even after anesthesia is given. Many inmates have twitched or moved after the injection, a clear sign that they are not fully anesthetized, including one case where a person fully sat up after being given the lethal injection, proving that his body was not anesthetized and he was experiencing the effects of the lethal drug. Click here to read a description of each of the five most common methods of execution.  

Despite many different execution methods being an option for some prisoners, lethal injection is the standard practice today, as it is seemingly the most ethical. Unfortunately, there is a growing mound of research suggesting that that may not be true. One article in particular, titled Gasping For Air: Autopsies Reveal Troubling Effects Of Lethal Injection has been haunting me since I read it a few months ago and led me to choose this topic to write about this month. It is very informative and I recommend reading it if you would like to continue your research into this topic. 

 

A barbed wire fence in front of a dusky sky
Click here to read an article by my coworker Kala Bhattar recounting the prison crisis in Alabama. It brings to light just how unforgiving and punitive Alabama tends to be in dealing with people who break the law. In this image, a barbed wire fence in front of a dusky sky. Source: Yahoo! Images

 

Alabama’s recent track record with lethal injections does not help the argument for the ethicality of the method. While researching, I came across too many horror stories of Alabama completely mishandling executions to recount them all. There will be a list of links at the end of this article to the stories that I could find. In November 2022, Governor Kay Ivey called to halt executions across the state because of a series of three botched executions in a row. All three, including Alan Miller, Kenneth Smith, and Joe Nathan James involved the inability of Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) workers to set an IV line for the drugs to be administered intravenously.

Unfortunately, this is a common theme in executions by lethal injection. As outlined in the Hippocratic Oath, doctors are not allowed to assist in setting the IV line for execution and most nurses refuse because of similar pledges to “do no harm.” This leaves the entire medical procedure of lethal injection in the hands of Department of Corrections (DOC) workers who are not trained in administering intravenous drugs. They often have a hard time obtaining medical training for this procedure because of the ethical restraints of the medical field and the lack of resources put towards obtaining training. DOC workers often puncture or “blow out” the veins of the arms and hands, rendering them unusable for intravenous injections. They then move on to veins in other areas, including the feet, inner thighs, stomach, collarbones, and forehead, blowing those out as well until they get lucky enough to place one without destroying it.

 

A hand with an IV line and a heart rate monitor on the thumb. The person’s arm is covered in a blue medical gown.
Setting an IV line is a standard procedure, but it requires extensive training and medical practice to perfect. The lack of training of DOC workers subjects inmates to excessively being poked by needles all over their bodies for hours on end. In this image, a hand with an IV line and a heart rate monitor on the thumb. The person’s arm is covered in a blue medical gown.Source: Yahoo! Images

 

Alan Miller had his execution called off after the workers attempting to set an IV line took so long that his execution warrant expired. Kenneth Smith’s execution warrant expired while waiting for his case to be heard by the Supreme Court, leaving him strapped to the execution gurney for almost four hours, at least two of which were devoted to placing an IV.

In July 2022, Mr. Joe Nathan James became the victim of the longest-recorded execution in United States history. Faith Hall was murdered in 1994 by her ex-boyfriend Mr. James, who was sentenced to death row in 1996, where he sat until 2022. During this time, the family of Faith Hall petitioned the governor’s office and the Department of Corrections multiple times to express their disapproval of Mr. James’ death sentence and to ask Governor Ivey to pardon him. ADOC took over three hours, allegedly attempting to set the IV line, although it is unsure what was actually going on in that room during this time. His execution was scheduled for 6:00 PM, but observers were not let into the room until 8:57. After repeatedly puncturing, blowing out, and destroying Mr. James’ veins, they finally set the IV correctly and preemptively delivered the anesthetic before the curtain was even opened, violating his right to hear his death warrant read aloud and taking away his chance to speak his last words. To add insult to injury, the family of Faith Hall wished to attend Mr. James’ execution long enough to show him that they forgave him and to hear his last words, then leave before the execution began. They did not get to fulfill these wishes after ADOC told them that leaving before the execution wasn’t an option, saying, “Once you’re in, you’re in.” 

On the day of the execution, in an embarrassing set of events, award-winning reporter for AL.com, Ivana Hrynkiw, was told by ADOC workers that she could not attend the execution because her skirt was too short and her open-toed shoes were “too revealing.” She had worn that same skirt to at least three executions before this one. A cameraman from a different media outlet offered her a pair of fishing waders with suspenders that he had in his car, and she attended the execution wearing those. Kim Chandler, another female reporter from the Associated Press, was subject to a clothing inspection before being allowed to enter the facility. It is thought that this was ADOC’s excuse to stall the entrance of media and guests into the observation room and to justify the three and a half hours that are unaccounted for. This entire execution was a nightmare for everyone involved. Following this was the failed executions of Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith, which led to Governor Ivey halting all executions. 

 

A row of open prison cells alongside a wall. They are made of gray bars and have sliding doors.
From the moment these people are put on death row, all of their human rights are violated. They are stripped of all of their liberty, all of their property, all of their dignity, and all of their humanity while patiently awaiting being stripped of their life. In this image, a row of open prison cells alongside a wall. They are made of gray bars and have sliding doors. Source: Yahoo! Image

 

Many people, including many church leaders, have petitioned Governor Ivey to do away with capital punishment altogether. Many people in all areas of the political spectrum have called out Governor Ivey’s hypocrisy in her intense opposition to abortion rights, citing the sacredness of life while also denying clemency to every death penalty case that has ever crossed her desk. In 2019, she denied clemency to Micheal Samra, a man with borderline intellectual functioning who was only 19 at the time of his crime, the day after passing a state-wide abortion ban. 

“Every life is precious and every life is a sacred gift from God…”

– Governor Kay Ivey, the day before the execution of a teenage offender.

Instead of listening to the cries of its citizens, Alabama has authorized an execution protocol for the use of an untested execution process, nitrogen hypoxia. This entails replacing all of the oxygen in a person’s lungs with nitrogen until they suffocate and essentially drown in gas. Veterinarians consider nitrogen hypoxia an ethically unacceptable practice for the euthanasia of animals. To make matters worse, Alabama wants to test this new method on Kenneth Smith just a few months after subjecting him to his first failed execution horror story. This new method, on top of being a terrible and excruciating death for the person subjected to it, may entail dangers for the executioners and spiritual advisors in the room. In Ramirez v. Collier (2022), the Supreme Court ruled that inmates being executed have a right to be touched by a spiritual advisor during and throughout their executions, but nitrogen hypoxia may infringe on this right, making it unsafe for a person to be within close proximity to them. 

A man asleep on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth.
Caryl Chessman was executed in 1960 by hypoxia and told reporters that he would nod if it hurt. Witnesses watched him nod for multiple minutes straight before falling unconscious. Source: Yahoo! Images

I can understand arguments for capital punishment in theory. I can understand the societal benefit of executing extremely violent repeat offenders who pose an ongoing threat to others. Death may even be more humane than life-long solitary confinement in cases where those are the only two options to prevent someone from causing more harm to others. If we lived in a world where we could guarantee that an execution would be painless, quick, and respectful and that the dignity of the person being executed could be maintained, we might have grounds for capital punishment in extreme cases. But right now, the research is unsure about the experience of people receiving a lethal injection, DOC workers are not qualified to perform the medical procedure of euthanasia, and the vast majority of people receiving the death penalty are one-time offenders who are remorseful for their crimes. I cannot fathom justifying capital punishment under these conditions, especially as it is practiced in the state I call home, Alabama. 

We cannot sit back and watch our Department of Corrections ask an unconscious man for his last words before executing him in silence as if his final thoughts were not worth hearing. We cannot stay silent in a state whose government will soon begin putting people in gas chambers to suffocate and drown in their own lungs, calling it justice. We cannot call ourselves humane if we support forcing other humans to experience the sensation of fire in their lungs from pulmonary edema after not being anesthetized properly, the pressure in their skulls growing until their eyes bulge from their sockets, or the terror of being strapped to your death bed for four hours straight while untrained executioners continuously prick your entire body. We must stand up for the human rights of the humans on death row.

Alabama mishandled executions: 

April 22, 1983 – John Evans

July 14, 1989 – Horace Dunkins, Jr.

December 8, 2016 – Ronald “Bert” Smith

October 17, 2017 – Torrey McNabb

February 22, 2018 – Doyle Hamm

July 28, 2022 – Joe James

September 22, 2022 – Alan Miller

November 17, 2022 – Kenneth Smith

July 21, 2023 – James Barber 

Most of my research for this case was from the Death Penalty Information Center. This is an incredibly holistic and in-depth database regarding the death penalty in the United States.

Capital Punishment and the Right to Life

A black and white picture of a prison cot with five belts used to strap down inmates in order to give them a lethal injection.
While it may seem like a common practice throughout the world, only about 28% of countries still maintain the death penalty in both law and practice. Source: Yahoo! Images

 

Stay tuned for my next article, where I will explore how the process of the death penalty, as well as the methods used to end the lives of inmates, may bring up additional human rights concerns. That article will be posted in the upcoming weeks. 

October 10th is the World Day Against the Death Penalty. 

It was my eighth birthday. I had gotten home from school and after eating my snack, I sat down on the couch. My birthday is in January and my mom hadn’t gotten around to packing up the expensive nativity scene from my grandmother that was set out on the sofa table behind my head. I got bored with my show, as eight-year-olds do, so I turned around and started playing with the porcelain figurines. To me, they were no more than stiff, less fun Barbies. Little did I know all it took was one little high-five between Joseph and the wise man with the frankincense before *CRACK* Joseph lost a hand. 

I still remember my mother’s face when I told her what happened. This nativity scene from her mother-in-law meant so much to her and she was feeling so many emotions. I knew that I deserved to be punished in some way for my mistake. I sat in time out for a while, I got a “stern talking-to” when my dad got home, and I didn’t see my favorite (real) Barbie for weeks.

My eight-year-old, future-philosophy-student self couldn’t help but question why all of this was happening to me. It was my birthday; my parents were supposed to be nice to me that day, but I still got in trouble. I knew that I should’ve been more careful with the figurine, but I also knew that what I did was an accident. I knew as soon as it broke that I had caused a problem, but I almost immediately learned from it: this material is weaker than Barbie material so I would need to use gentler hands when holding it. But I still couldn’t figure out why my parents were doing this. As I grow up, this concern still follows me. What motivates society to punish people who break the law? How could our system of punishment improve to allow people to learn from their mistakes and to still participate in society?

A drawing of a man in an orange jumpsuit with his head down standing behind metal bars. One of the bars makes the shape of a noose around his head.
Minorities, especially racial minorities, make up a disproportionate percentage of prisoners on death row. Source: Yahoo! Images

Theories of Punishment

Retribution 

The Retribution Theory of punishment holds that people who harm others deserve to be harmed and that the justice system should give them what they deserve. I like to call this the revenge theory or the “eye for an eye” theory. The arguments for this theory are, in my opinion, not very strong. Sure, it seems intuitive that when somebody wrongs us we want to wrong them back, but what good does that do? And should we really set up an entire justice system based on retribution when that only causes more harm to people, despite if they “deserve it?”

Deterrence

The Deterrence Theory of punishment holds that societies should punish moral failings in a way that when people hear about the punishment for a certain crime, it deters them from committing it. For example, people may not use drugs because they are afraid of what would happen if they got caught. If we want people to stop doing drugs, according to deterrence theory, we should inflict harsher punishments for those caught with drugs. The main critique of this theory is that it does not deter people from doing the thing, it only deters people from getting caught doing the thing, thus driving the whole crime farther and farther underground. 

Restoration

The Restoration, Humanitarian, or Utilitarian theory of punishment is based on the idea that after a harm occurs, we should avoid any further harm coming to anybody involved. This may entail rehabilitating people with addictions to live addiction free or mandating driving school and road safety courses for negligent drivers. This doesn’t just apply to low-level crimes though. This may mean a prison system similar to Norway’s, where even the most violent criminals are kept in a remote community where their rights and privileges are upheld. The average sentence is around 8 months, and after they’ve had time to reflect on their actions, they are allowed to return to society as usual. Click here to learn about what went into the design of one of Norway’s most famously humane prisons.  This theory is often criticized as being “soft on crime,” saying that if we don’t make going to prison incredibly unpleasant, criminals will not have any reason not to re-offend. 

A wooden electric chair against a dirty wall in the background.
The youngest person to be executed by electric chair in the 20th century was 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His conviction was later vacated as an unfair trial. Source: Yahoo! Images

Pragmatically, when we are deciding which theory of punishment to ascribe to, we are balancing the weight of the government’s function that motivates law enforcement with the human rights of everybody involved in the crime. 

So what is the government function of capital punishment and does it outweigh the most fundamental human right, one’s right to one’s own life?

Government Function

It is widely agreed upon that the government’s most fundamental function is to protect the rights of people in its jurisdiction. This includes mediating conflicts in which a person impedes on another’s rights. In these terms, the crime of theft is when a perpetrator impedes on the victim’s right to own property. In this case, the government then has an obligation to interfere in some way to bring justice to the victim. Most of the time, this interference will constitute the government temporarily impeding on the rights of the perpetrator themselves. This may mean keeping them in jail until their trial, imposing a fine on them, or even sentencing them to prison time. 

Human Rights

The right to life is inarguably the most fundamental natural human right that exists. All humans have a fundamental right to live their bodies’ natural lifespan through to its end. It can even be argued that humans have the right to the best healthcare available to extend their lifespan as long as possible. Without the right to life, no other human rights of any kind can be realized. This is why the most widely recognized phrase about human rights lists life as the first. 

As the Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and from that, they derive inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

To take someone’s life is to take away that person’s most fundamental, widely-recognized human right.

Balancing Both

Does the governmental function of societal safety ever justify taking away the perpetrator’s number one human right? Especially when, given that life in prison is an alternative option, societal safety is not even at risk by keeping these people alive. Many people will argue that keeping them in prison requires too many resources whereas the death penalty is a quick and easy way to save resources for the rest of society. Not only does this completely dehumanize people who have committed crimes, but it also switches the governmental interest from public safety to the much less compelling governmental interest of distributing resources. The interest in these resources is not compelling enough to justify the deprivation of someone’s life. Even if you think it is okay to impede on a perpetrator’s rights to prevent them from causing more harm to society, it is unclear that the deprivation of life would achieve this goal when life in prison is an alternative. 

The sun shines behind a wooden gallows with two nooses hanging down.
Three states still allow hanging as a possible execution method. Source: Yahoo! Images

According to the Retribution theory, people who took another life deserve to be killed solely on the “eye-for-an-eye” principle. But something doesn’t sit right when we try to defend this principle without dehumanizing people convicted of crimes. As a society, is it a good thing that we think a certain group of people deserves to die, even if their qualification into that group was voluntary?

According to the Deterrence theory, the death penalty may actually be an effective deterrence for prospective criminals. If they knew that committing this crime may literally mean the end of their lives, they may not commit the crime. However, it is unclear that the deterrence factor of life in prison, essentially ending people’s lives as they know it, is so much less effective than the deterrence factor of the death penalty that it justifies taking lives. 

According to the Restoration theory, capital punishment stands no chance. This theory is based on the hope of rehabilitation for criminals, even if that means they are only ever restored insofar as to live a meaningful life in prison. This theory is considered to be the most humane approach to punishment, and as far as research can tell, the one compatible with the lowest recidivism (re-offending) rates. 

Prisoners of Conscience

Recently, upon landing at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, avowed critic of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny, was arrested for allegedly violating the terms of a suspended sentence related to a 2014 embezzlement charge. The European Court of Human Rights later ruled that that trial had been politically motivated and resulted in an unfair conviction. The arrest came as no surprise; Navalny had made clear that he expected to be arrested when he returned home to Russia. Still, the Russian government’s blatant repression of one of their loudest critics inspired outrage and disappointment from around the world.

Photo of Alexei Navalny
Navalny in 2014. Evgeny Feldman / Novaya Gazeta. Wikimedia commons.

Navalny had been taken to hospital in Germany in after he became very ill aboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20th and nearly died. He was in a coma for over two weeks before making a remarkable recovery. The German government in September determined with “unequivocal proof” from toxicology tests that Navalny had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. In December, investigations by The Insider and Bellingcat with CNN and Der Spiegel implicated Russia’s Federal Security Service in the attempt on Navalny’s life. Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has been a target for criticism by Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation for years, called media reports that he had ordered Navalny’s poisoning a U.S. backed plot to discredit him. Putin suggested that Navalny was not important enough to be poisoned, adding “[i]f someone had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off.”

Amnesty International last week added Navalny to its list of prisoners of conscience as a result of his arrest. Commenting on his detention, Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office director, said, “Aleksei Navalny’s arrest is further evidence that Russian authorities are seeking to silence him. His detention only highlights the need to investigate his allegations that he was poisoned by state agents acting on orders from the highest levels.”

Protests in response to Navalny’s arrest and the widespread corruption amongst Russian political leaders erupted January 22nd. As of when this was written, over three-thousand our-hundred protestors had been arrested, including Navalny’s wife, lawyers, and more than twenty-five known associates. Most are being held without charge. In Moscow, more than fifteen-thousand protestors gathered and endured temperatures as low as negative fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

Protestors in St. Petersburg, Russia
Protestors in St. Petersburg, Russia. Associated Press / AP Photo / Dmitri Lovetsky. Fair use.

Prisoners of conscience are those who are imprisoned because of their race, sexual orientation, religion, or political views, as well as those under persecution for the nonviolent expression of conscientiously held beliefs. The term was coined in 1961 in an article The Forgotten Prisoners by Peter Benenson, a lawyer and activist who founded Amnesty International. Today, Amnesty International is actively campaigning for the release of around one-hundred fifty documented prisoners of conscience, although the number of people who meet the definition is certainly much higher than that. Amnesty International figures that there are “likely thousands more”. Currently, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Iran, and Belarus have the highest number of known, documented prisoners of conscience, although information about political prisoners is sometimes heavily restricted, particularly in China and North Korea. It is likely that there are dozens, if not hundreds more prisoners of conscience in these countries alone.

Last year, Amnesty prisoner of conscience Rubén González was released after being held since 2018 on charges that he had “insulted” the armed forces in Venezuela. González had been acquitted in 2014 after a five year trial for organizing a strike. While he was imprisoned, he was the only civilian prisoner in the military wing of the La Pica prison in Monagas. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, criticized González’ conviction and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention characterized his imprisonment as arbitrary. Amnesty International’s campaign for González’ release is representative of their work across the globe, showing that international condemnation is an effective tool against the incarceration of prisoners of conscience.

In Iran, Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human rights lawyer who has twice been arrested for her campaigns both for opposition candidates and for women’s rights. In 2010, Sotoudeh was charged with spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. The Washington Post characterized the arrest as emblematic of “an intensifying crackdown on lawyers who defend influential opposition politicians, activists, and journalists.” During her first imprisonment, Sotoudeh staged three hunger strikes, with two of them lasting four weeks and seven weeks respectively. In 2018, Nasrin was arrested again, and charged with espionage, dissemination of propaganda, and disparaging the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. For this, she was sentenced to five years.

Accurate information about prisoners of conscience can be hard to come by, because the states that are more commonly imprisoning people for ‘thought crimes’ are also the states more likely to be highly suppressive of reports about their human rights abuses. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, estimates of the number of prisoners of conscience range from absolutely none, reported by the Ministry of Interior, to thirty-thousand reported by the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the BBC. In addition to their arbitrary detention of political activists, Saudi Arabia has also been heavily criticized by human rights bodies for their prolific use of capital punishment, including against people who were children when they were accused of crimes. In 2016, Ali Sa’eed al-Ribh was executed, despite the government admitting during trial that he was under the age of eighteen at the time of his alleged crimes. Because Saudi Arabia is party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, they are legally required to ensure that no one under the age of eighteen at the time of a crime is sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of release. Currently, several young Saudis are awaiting execution, including Ali al-Nimr, who was seventeen, Abdullah al-Zaher, who was sixteen, and Dawood al-Marhoon, who was seventeen when they were arrested. In addition, in 2017, Abdulkareem al-Hawaj’s death sentence was upheld on appeal for crimes committed when he was sixteen. All of their crimes relate to anti-government protests.

Photo of Loujain al-Hathloul
Loujain al-Hathloul. Creative Commons.

In 2018 and 2019, Saudi Arabia came down heavily on feminist activists, including Loujain al-Hathloul, who has been imprisoned since May 2018. al-Hathloul is known for her campaigns against the driving ban, and has been detained many times previously for offenses such as driving a car and appearing on camera with her face and hair uncovered. For the first several months of her detention, she was not allowed to contact her family or lawyer. al-Hathloul was subjected to beatings, waterboarding, electric shocks, and sexual abuse. During her first trial in March of 2019, she was charged with “promoting women’s rights, calling for the end of the male guardianship system, and contacting international organizations and foreign media.” Saudi Arabia has, over the last decade or so, made some purely performative and milquetoast changes to their repressive policies. In 2017, King Salman decreed that women be allowed access to some government services without the consent of a male guardian. The case of al-Hathloul and others show without a doubt that nothing substantive has changed. Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the most repressive powers in the world — for women, for activists, for critics of the regime. All of this from a country that we, in the United States, continue to support economically and diplomatically. And, for the last four years, have only become closer with.

The plight of prisoners of conscience around the world should be a priority for any freedom loving people and all freedom loving states. Amnesty International continues to do important work to bring awareness to and win freedom for political and ideological prisoners. Hopefully, governments that believe in liberty will start to hold each other accountable and unite against states who do not. Until the last prisoner of conscience is freed.

Further reading:

Who Are Prisoners of Conscience?

List of Designated Prisoners of Conscience