An NPR segment titled Gasping For Air: Autopsies Reveal Troubling Effects Of Lethal Injection featured Professor Deborah Denno. Professor Denno discusses how Judges can vary on interpretations of pain as it pertains to lethal injection.
Most states use three drugs during a lethal injection: The first is supposed to anesthetize inmates; the second paralyzes them; the third stops the heart.
“How do we ask an inmate whether or not they experience their own death as cruel?” says Zivot. “Here was, to my mind, the beginning of a piece of evidence that has been critically absent.”
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The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether the pain associated with pulmonary edema violates this standard. However, in July, lawyers for inmates on federal death row presented evidence of pulmonary edema before the court — and justices allowed the executions to proceed.
Denno says it’s a standard that is extremely subjective and may be interpreted differently judge by judge.
“Somebody might think that suffocation certainly constitutes pain,” Denno says says. “And another judge may think it’s not — that suffocation alone doesn’t qualify as severe pain and needless suffering.”