A Shortage and the Death Penalty

It took Dennis McGuire 26 minutes to die. The convict appeared to regain consciousness on the execution table a little after being injected with a lethal dose by executioners in an Ohio prison, then visibly tried — with growing difficulty — to breathe during the longest death throes ever seen in 15 years at Ohio’s death row.

A shortage of Pentothal, the medication ordinarily used for lethal injections in the United States, has forced state authorities to turn to an ersatz drug, Midazolam, which was never tested or approved for killing human beings. The lawyers representing McGuire — who was found guilty in 1989 of raping and stabbing to death a young pregnant woman — have argued before a court of justice that this experiment could cause a feeling of asphyxia and a feeling of distress resembling a “cruel and unusual punishment” forbidden by the Constitution. The judge’s response on the right of state judiciary authorities to experiment and the prosecution’s defense speech recalling that the guilty are not assured the right to a painless execution led to the request’s rejection.

Production by Hospira, the only American producer of Pentothal, stopped in 2011, leaving American prisons bereft; the company is worried about possible reprisals at its European factories. Especially since the only pharmaceutical company still producing this powerful painkiller — Danish Lundbeck — has itself prohibited the delivery of its drug to American prisons for fear of a public outcry and sanctions from Brussels.

In the United States the reactions to this boycott speak volumes about the isolation of the states concerned and of the advances in the anti-death penalty movement. The defense of capital punishment dogma more and more resembles a demonstration of territorial pride in response to discourse on the rights of man deriving from Europe. Imperturbable Texas has announced that it will provide the drug at pharmacies, including nonlicensed establishments; Ohio and Florida are trying new drugs and Missouri has authorized the use of firing squads by way of an alternative if chemical execution becomes too difficult. Wyoming, also facing a shortfall, admits that its other method of killing — the gas chamber — is complicated because the state has not provided the necessary equipment for several years due to budget cuts …

An especially detestable person given his crime, Dennis McGuire’s passing is not enough to provoke a social movement, but the noose is tightening on death penalty dogma. At a time where “only” 63 percent of Americans approve of execution, the end of the painless execution myth could soon relaunch a national controversy.