Deborah Denno comments to The Oregonian on the three-drug lethal injection. Critics say poor understanding of the drugs’ effects and executioners’ lack of medical training has led to botched cases and a likelihood of extreme suffering in some instances.
Oklahoma spent no time or money to study the effects of the three-drug combination. Nevertheless, it rapidly caught on in the U.S. Death penalty laws in Oregon and other states use nearly the same language Oklahoma used to specify how lethal injections are done, notes Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno.
“By virtue of coming up with a method of execution that makes an inmate look serene, comfortable, and sleeping during the death process, the death penalty in this country was rescued,” Denno said in a round-table discussion published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008. “The presence of doctors, their involvement, and the association with medicalizing the procedure enhanced its constitutional acceptability.”
Read the entire Oregonian story.
