Jacob Sullum on the Medicalization of the Death Penalty

Sixteen minutes
into last week’s botched lethal injection at the Oklahoma
State Penitentiary, the warden closed the blinds on the windows to
the execution chamber and turned off the sound so that witnesses
could not see Clayton Lockett writhe or hear him moan. The
procedure, designed to resemble a medical treatment—albeit one with
an involuntary patient and a very low probability of recovery—had
begun to look uncomfortably like the cold-blooded killing of a
helpless person. Jacob Sullum argues that the eagerness of death
penalty advocates to address the shortcomings revealed by Lockett’s
drawn-out demise suggests that majority support for capital
punishment depends on sanitizing the practice to conceal its true
nature.

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