In the US, looking for more humane ways of the death penalty: what options are possible

After a series of cases where attempts to execute a criminal by lethal injection ended in failure, the humanity of this method has been called into question. But are there even “humane” ways to kill a person? The publication was looking for an answer to this question Air force.

Фото: Depositphotos

In 1982, for the first time in the United States, a sperm injection was used as a penalty. Prior to this, the favorite way of Americans was the electric chair, the use of which in our day seems like real torture. It was so painful that sometimes the eyes of the executed person jumped out of orbit and hung on his cheeks. Criminals' hair often caught fire, and the guards always kept fire extinguishers at the ready.

Lethal injection at the time proclaimed a more humane and technologically advanced way of depriving a person of life. No blood, no screams.

Charles Brooks Jr. was the first person to be killed by injection. The lethal injection was administered intravenously, through a drip, the doctors were nearby.

One of the witnesses of that first execution said that Brooks just yawned, his stomach rose and sank. A few minutes later, the doctor stated death.

In those US states where the death penalty has not yet been abolished, this method is used. However, not always everything goes so serenely.

The problem is that no one has actually bothered to check - there have been no studies on whether lethal injection is really that "humane."

By the year 2005, when more than a thousand executions had already been carried out using this method, a group of scientists led by Indianapolis surgeon Leonidas Koniaris decided to investigate.

They studied archival records of executions in prisons in Texas and Virginia and found that 44% of prisoners were conscious when they were dying, and most likely were in excruciating pain.

They could not shout or burst out, because the deadly cocktail contains a substance that paralyzes the muscles.

Further research showed that one of the components of the injection that was supposed to stop the heart did not work.

“Based on the available evidence, it is extremely alarming to conclude that the person died of asphyxiation,” says Koniaris. “And this is just a nightmare scenario.” But it seemed to us that we were done with painful methods of execution.”

Although most Americans agree that the death penalty should exist, very few of them believe that the executed person should suffer physical agony.

The current shortage of drugs for injection has led to the fact that in some states began to experiment with alternatives.

As a result, several executions were completely different from what was planned: during one of them, for example, it took two whole hours for a person to die as a result of suffocation.

Are there any more humane options? They have been searched for for several centuries.

Фото: Depositphotos

Nitrogen hypoxia

One of the most recent ideas for humanizing execution is nitrogen hypoxia. This procedure involves replacing the air with an inert gas, such as nitrogen or helium.

To begin with, the air and so on 78-79% consists of nitrogen. It acts surprisingly quickly: one of the studies conducted in 1960-x, showed that volunteers who breathed pure nitrogen, lost consciousness already at 17-20 second.

Experiments on animals give reason to believe that after this a person stops breathing - in just three seconds.

In addition, our biology works here in such a way that this death, apparently, is painless. Our body does not notice the lack of oxygen, and death is not felt like suffocation.

In the three states of the United States, the method of nitrogen hypoxia is now adopted as a spare. But is it a mistake?

Robert Dunham, a lawyer and executive director of the Information Center on Death Sentences, believes that it is certainly a mistake.

“Both the American Veterinary Veterinary Association and the World Organization for Animal Welfare believe that nitrogen hypoxia is unacceptable for euthanasia in veterinary medicine,” he says. “It doesn’t work as quickly as they try to convince us.” Cats and dogs sense approaching death long before they lose consciousness. And it takes at least 7 minutes to euthanize a pig, for example.”

One of the main problems with nitrogen hypoxia is that the method requires the cooperation of the convict. If he is holding his breath or inhaling shallowly, the process will take much longer.

According to Dunham, the sentenced person will most likely be given an anesthetic injection first. And this again brings us back to the problems that have arisen in connection with the lethal injection: no pharmaceutical company wants its drugs used to kill people.

“The main problem of the United States is that here, on the one hand, they want a person to be executed, but, on the other hand, so that it does not look like someone is being barbarically killed in the United States,” he emphasizes.

“However, there is an internal contradiction in this desire. When we talk about the death penalty, I think people need to understand that it itself cannot be humane,” Dunham says.

Whatever it was, but this method looks much more humane than all the options that existed before. Moreover, in some countries and even US states, some of the historical options still take the place of spare ones.

Guillotine

After a series of brutal indicative executions (when cutting off the head at times required several blows of an ax), it became clear even to the executioners: the process requires modernization.

It was then that Dr. Joseph Guillotin, convinced that the execution should be carried out more humanely, and came up with the idea of ​​using a device that was later named in his honor (although it was used before him in Scotland, Ireland and other countries).

He suggested the guillotine because, as he stated, “with my machine I can cut off your head without you even blinking, without even feeling a thing.”

The slanting edge of the guillotine was raised along wooden rails to the height of the 2-3 meter and was fixed there above the neck of the executed person. Some models had special baskets for a falling severed head. Due to the severity of the falling blade, such a penalty was much more reliable.

How humane was she? Laboratory mice could tell about this, since during a certain type of experiment they are deprived of their lives by decapitation using a miniature guillotine.

In one of the 1975 studies, it was noted that signs of preserved consciousness were present for the duration from 9 to 18 seconds after the animal was decapitated.

After this, other experiments have demonstrated that such a time interval is also valid for other animals, so it seems that the situation with a just executed person seems to be the same.

Shooting

Although this method is more associated with war or war crimes, in the state of Utah, shooting was recently accepted as a backup method of execution. And in North Korea, it is used everywhere.

In a typical situation, the convict is tied to a chair with a bag on his head. Then a firing squad of five people makes a salvo into his chest. For greater anonymity, one of them has a gun loaded with a blank cartridge.

In 1938, 40-year-old John Deering, convicted of murder, was executed in Utah. Unexpectedly for everyone, he suggested connecting him to an electrocardiograph during the execution - so now we have an idea of ​​​​how quickly this method works.

The monitor reflected that Deering's heart stopped beating after just 15 seconds after bullets hit him.

Of course, it is impossible to know how long he felt the pain, but here again the rodents will help us. In a study of 2015 of the year that studied cardiac arrest in rats, it was noted that it was usually followed by a surge of brain activity for approximately 30 seconds.

This may explain why those who experience clinical death experience feelings akin to enlightenment.

Фото: Depositphotos

Hanging

There are two main ways of hanging. At the first, the victim with a noose around his neck is dropped from a small height (say, from a stool) and dies from suffocation. This is the most painful way.

In the second (more humane), the height of the gallows is greater, and the rope eventually breaks the victim's cervical vertebrae. The executor loses consciousness almost immediately, but 20 minutes can pass before his heart stops.

The problem with hanging is that such a penalty requires a very accurate calculation. For example, in an unsuccessful set of circumstances, the head of the hanged man could have come off.

Electric chair

When the electric chair was invented, it was considered a more humane alternative to hanging—a more civilized and scientific method of execution.

It all began with a report ordered from 1887 by the State of New York, from which blood was drained in the veins: it evaluated 34 for killing a person.

One of the authors of the report, a dentist, recalled how he was told about a drunk docker who had touched an electric generator and died immediately.

In connection with this, the dentist had the idea to construct an electric chair - and it was used three years later against a murderer who hacked his victim to death with an ax.

However, the novel with an electric chair did not last long. Soon the public learned that death on it is often extremely painful, and it looks ugly.

Currently, in nine states of the United States, this method is considered to be a spare, but his reputation, to put it mildly, is contradictory.

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