Deborah Denno comments to the New York Times on the combination of market forces and European objections to the death penalty that have left the nation’s busiest execution chamber with only enough of a key drug — sodium thiopental — to use for two convicted murderers in February 2011.
There is no science-approved approach to carrying out lethal injection, said Deborah W. Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert on the death penalty. Rather, most states came to their own consensus that the three-drug cocktail was the best method. The perception, she said, was that it was a more clinical method than others that the public found too gruesome and that had been phased out, like hanging or the gas chamber, which used chemicals similar to those the Nazis employed in death camps.
Although the courts, up to now, have rejected arguments that lethal injection is inhumane, Ms. Denno said that some scientists questioned that verdict, and that changing the drugs used based on availability without knowing how they will work is tantamount to experimentation.
“You can’t continue to do that with human beings and hope for the best,” she said.
There is, Ms. Denno said, one method that is quick, effective, affordable and does not depend on Europe: the firing squad. Since 1976, a firing squad has been used only three times, all in Utah. Although the state changed its death penalty law in 2004 to require lethal injection, it allowed Ronnie Lee Gardner — who was convicted of murder in 1985, when the firing squad was still used — to choose it. He was shot to death last June.
“It’s the most humane procedure,” Ms. Denno said. “It’s only because of this Wild West notion that people are against it.”
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