Post by Anja on Jun 15, 2006 16:02:46 GMT -5
Hope of life for death row inmates
MORE than 3000 US prisoners condemned to die by lethal injection have been
given new hope of life by a US Supreme Court ruling on Monday.
Clarence Hill, a Florida death-row inmate, was granted leave to appeal
against his execution on the grounds that the chemicals in the injection
could cause him unnecessary pain and therefore violate his constitutional
rights. In the 38 states that practise lethal injection, some 3360 inmates
on death row will now be able to appeal against their sentence.
The big question - one that the Supreme Court didn't rule on - is whether
the triple thingytail of drugs used to kill prisoners actually causes pain.
A study in The Lancet last year (vol 365, p 1412) concluded that many
prisoners may have received too little anaesthetic to mask the pain of the
injection that stops the heart, and in February an execution in California
was postponed on these grounds (see New Scientist, 4 March, p 10).
North Carolina got round the pain objection in April by using an
instrument to monitor the brain activity of the condemned man, to make
sure he was "out". But the company that makes the machine objects to it
being used this way, and a task force from the American Society of
Anesthesiologists recently concluded that readings from such monitors do
not necessarily show the depth of anaesthesia.
(source: New Scientist)
MORE than 3000 US prisoners condemned to die by lethal injection have been
given new hope of life by a US Supreme Court ruling on Monday.
Clarence Hill, a Florida death-row inmate, was granted leave to appeal
against his execution on the grounds that the chemicals in the injection
could cause him unnecessary pain and therefore violate his constitutional
rights. In the 38 states that practise lethal injection, some 3360 inmates
on death row will now be able to appeal against their sentence.
The big question - one that the Supreme Court didn't rule on - is whether
the triple thingytail of drugs used to kill prisoners actually causes pain.
A study in The Lancet last year (vol 365, p 1412) concluded that many
prisoners may have received too little anaesthetic to mask the pain of the
injection that stops the heart, and in February an execution in California
was postponed on these grounds (see New Scientist, 4 March, p 10).
North Carolina got round the pain objection in April by using an
instrument to monitor the brain activity of the condemned man, to make
sure he was "out". But the company that makes the machine objects to it
being used this way, and a task force from the American Society of
Anesthesiologists recently concluded that readings from such monitors do
not necessarily show the depth of anaesthesia.
(source: New Scientist)