If we must kill inmates, at least treat them like dogs
If we lived in the authoritarian, politically repressive former Soviet state of Uzbekistan, this debate would be beneath us. Uzbekistan joined the majority of the civilized world on Jan. 1 by banning the death penalty.
But here in the United States -- where Texas alone tries to keep pace with Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and China -- the current debate about the death penalty is whether the condemned has a constitutional right to avoid excruciating pain.
When lawyers argued this week that the three-drug cocktail we use to kill inmates might cause excessive pain, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gruffly noted, "This is an execution, not surgery," but Scalia stopped short of promoting stoning.
In Illinois, our statutes demand that we use -- or did before Gov. George Ryan issued his moratorium on executions eight years ago this month -- the three-drug cocktail "of an ultrashort-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent and potassium chloride."
If those Illinois officials were euthanizing a vicious dog, "nobody would humanely" use that cocktail, notes veterinarian Eric Davis, director of the Rural Area Veterinary Services with the Humane Society of the United States.
The second drug, which paralyzes inmates, is designed to stop unsightly muscle twitches of the dead. It doesn't do anything to alleviate pain, but it would prevent animals or people from moving, moaning or letting executioners know something is wrong.
The Supreme Court case comes from Kentucky, where it is against the law to kill a dog in the way the state executes prisoners.
"It just seems a strange and complex formula they use versus what is done in animals," Davis says. "Animals generally are euthanized with an overdose of barbiturates. It's an overdose of a sleeping pill, if you will."
Technicians at the DuPage County Animal Care & Control and other suburban locations follow that more humane procedure recommended by he Humane Society of the United States.
"It's all about alleviating the stress of the animals," says Kerry Vinkler, executive director of the DuPage clinic. "Even aggressive animals are treated with compassion and respect."
DuPage staff members will attend a seminar on the subject next month in St. Louis taught by the American Humane Association. The two-day session includes hands-on medical training, but also deals with compassion and a recognition of the animal's state of mind, and the mental issues for the people. All those involved with putting down animals must be certified. It requires a human touch.
"If you were to take that same dose and inject it very slowly the animal would go through an excitation phase before it gets sleepy," Davis says, explaining the individual care that goes into each animal's death.
While Illinois requires a licensed physician to pronounce the death of an executed inmate, the training of executioners and the details of the procedure are not as public as the rules at the DuPage animal clinic.
"We don't discuss the procedure as far as the process," says Derek Schnapp, the Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman who politely must point to state law books.
The law provides more protection for the executioners than for the condemned. To shield the identify of people involved in the execution of an inmate, the law says pharmacists are "authorized to dispense drugs" to the prison officials "without prescription," and that the state can pay in cash "to protect the confidentiality of persons participating in an execution."
Illinois -- where we would have executed a bunch of innocent people and gotten away with it if not for some meddling college kids and their professor -- shouldn't have a death penalty. But if we are going to execute inmates, we should at the very least treat them like dogs.