The Pros And Cons Of Lethal Injections

Even though lethal injections are described to be the most humane and least repugnant, there has still been a few problems where it turns out to be the opposite. Lethal injections originally contain a mixture of three drugs called pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, and sodium thiopental. The first drug used was sodium thiopental (short term anesthesia) with the job of putting the inmate to deep sleep for a few seconds. Then pancuronium bromide, also referred as pavulon is introduced to the body relaxing all muscles and paralyzing the entire skeleton including the inmate’s diaphragm and the entire respiratory system causing death by asphyxiation. Lastly potassium chloride is injected stopping the heart. The combinations of these three

In reality, there has not been many actual experience with hangings where only three states have been allowed to use this alternative. Normally hangings are known to be very quick and easy; in reality they are easier and less expensive compared to other death penalty forms, but it is not as quick some may claim. Hangings can usually take an average between twenty to forty-five minutes while an inmate is drastically suffocating until his death is officially declared. This process technically depends on the rope on whether the inmate will have a decent or devastating death. For example, if the rope is wrongly put or if it is too short, the execution may last an average of forty-five minutes or even more. Like abc news stated, “The man hit bottom and (was) observed fighting by pulling on the straps, wheezing, whistling, trying to get air. Blood was oozing (though) the black cap. He urinated, defecated and the droppings fell to the floor. The stench was terrible.” This quote was meant for the hanging of a man in San Quentin, a federal penitentiary in the state of California during the year of 1942. If the rope is too long for the inmate, he or she will be decapitated by disconnecting spinal cord away from the neck, and even though this may sound wrong to many, this is

Usually when it comes to gas chambers some might think of asphyxiation due to sodium cyanide gas causing prisoners to die in severe horror pain and anxiety. Now, things have changed by Secretary James LeBlanc coming up with a much better approach which is called nitrogen gas. Nitrogen is a natural gas that is odorless and colorless that is found makes 78% of our atmosphere. There have been circumstances where people have accidentally died because of nitrogen asphyxiation, and it has been described that people with death like this “usually never know what hit them. (It is even possible that death by nitrogen gas is mildly euphoric” (State). “The condemned prisoner would detect no abnormal sensation breathing the odorless, tasteless gas, and would not undergo the painful experience of suffocation, which is caused by a building up of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, not by lack of oxygen” according to the article Death by Nitrogen. Gas chambers could actually become the lead for death penalty, but there are still experiments to go through for this to be a hundred percent accurate, especially when there has not been the opportunity to be tried. But because there is no accuracy guaranteed, firing squads should be giving the chance to become the leading