On forcing meds on prisoner to be able to legally execute him.

[no1_vern]

Yes, we WANT HIM SANE AND AWARE that we are going to execute him.

The execution of Steven Staley: Forcible medication on death row in Texas. - Slate Magazine

Can the state force a person to take drugs in order to execute him? That is the grisly question raised by the case of Steven Staley, a convicted murderer who believes polygraph machines are controlling and torturing him. Even though he’s psychotic, Staley is scheduled to be executed next week, based on a judge’s order requiring him to take medication he has refused.

--SNIP--

In 2006, after Staley stopped his medication, Judge Wayne Salvant, in a moment of mercy, found him incompetent to be executed. The District Attorney for Tarrant County, Joe Shannon, Jr., unmercifully asked Salvant to order Staley to be forcibly medicated. Salvant entered the order, finding that medicating Staley was the only way to ensure his competency to be executed, and that “the State has an essential interest in ensuring that the sentence of this Court is carried out.”

What is behind Judge Salvant’s chilling decision? In two cases in the 1990s, the Supreme Court said that the government can forcibly medicate a mentally ill inmate if he is dangerous to himself or others, the treatment is in his medical interest, and there is no less intrusive alternative. In 2003, the court acknowledged concerns about side effects of the drugs, and emphasized that the treatment had to be medically appropriate. None of these cases involved pending executions, however. When death is the state’s end goal, how can anyone argue that forcible medication is in a prisoner’s medical interest?

Can the state force a person to take drugs so he will understand what is being done to him, in order to execute him? Should we ?

[tony_j15]

IMO, he seems incompetent to have stood trial in the first place.

Forced medication is actually involved in all lethal injections. IIRC, the first of the three injections is a numbing/paralysis agent thought to control pain so that the executee does not suffer.

[no1_vern]

O.O Um, sorry.

I meant should we force the prisoner to take medications to make him capable of understanding what is being done to him BEFORE we administer the execution medications(lethal injection)

[Chuckiechan]

A California state inmate who was diabetic quit taking his insulin and planned to die. The state forced him to take it.

An inmate is there to serve a sentence for "poor decision making", in the first place.

[Epidemic]

I am pretty unmerciful when it comes to this stuff.

With or without the drugs shortly after he is brought into the death chamber he will no longer have any issues.

If you wanted to make people not suffer on death row then the time and moment of death should be done without a clock just one day you walk in gas him with some mind numbing substance that renders him unconscious and then execute him.

No count down clock 1 month to my death, 1 week to my death, last day, last hour, strap me in stick me with needles give a speech shoot me up with drugs.

of course that would not work because you still knew that at any moment you could be offed after a set date that you already counted down to.

But seriously I am not sure a sane person has any more ability to cope with impending death on a schedule than a nutcase. It is torture no matter how you slice it so lets just be honest and give him the drugs or just bring him in ranting and raving who cares.

[thephilosophizer]

I am pretty unmerciful when it comes to this stuff.

With or without the drugs shortly after he is brought into the death chamber he will no longer have any issues.

If you wanted to make people not suffer on death row then the time and moment of death should be done without a clock just one day you walk in gas him with some mind numbing substance that renders him unconscious and then execute him.

No count down clock 1 month to my death, 1 week to my death, last day, last hour, strap me in stick me with needles give a speech shoot me up with drugs.

of course that would not work because you still knew that at any moment you could be offed after a set date that you already counted down to.

But seriously I am not sure a sane person has any more ability to cope with impending death on a schedule than a nutcase. It is torture no matter how you slice it so lets just be honest and give him the drugs or just bring him in ranting and raving who cares.

But you're avoiding the question. The issue here is around two points. The first is about whether it is just to execute a mentally incompetent person. Generally we as a society do not hold the mentally ill to the same level of responsibility as we do those whom are fully cogent.
If it's the case that this person is only cogent when medicated, that means two things; that he was likely not in control at the time of the act, and that the state would be making him competent, in order to execute him. Which is the second point. Can the state forcibly medicate someone, when it is expressly not in that person's best interest to be medicated (whereas being medicated allows the state to kill him, and being killed is not in a person's best interest).
Clearly this person poses a grave threat to the public, and there is no argument that advocates for his release, but, it seems to me that this sort of person belongs in a mental institution, and being heavily medicated. Executing a mentally incompetent person seems to be taking it too far.

[pickel]

The moment he's convicted ( through due process with irrefutable evidence) , regardless of the mental or physical condition, just pop a cap in his convicted ass and dispose of the body PERIOD

[thephilosophizer]

The moment he's convicted ( through due process with irrefutable evidence) , regardless of the mental or physical condition, just pop a cap in his convicted ass and dispose of the body PERIOD

As simple as that might make things, the potentiality of wrongful conviction alone means that we need to have a process for appeals. Since 1989, 289 people have been exonerated through DNA evidence, with an average time served of 13.5 years. This is the work that one program, working often times against very hostile police, and DA offices, has accomplished.
Then of course there is the father in Texas, convicted for killing his children, whom was proven innocent through refined forensic techniques, five years after his execution. And how many times do you think that blacks were wrongfully convicted in the south, by a tough on crime DA, because they simply needed to convict someone of the crime?
Fact of the matter is that we are not good enough at determining guilt or innocence to be able to take the risk associated will state-executions, especially when you considered that there is absolutely no demonstrable benefit to using said punishment. And that because of the cautions that we've agreed we need (the appeals process), it is more expensive to execute someone, then to have them in prison for life.

[Epidemic]

I am all for punishing police and DA's who prosecute for political expediency. I am further glad to reduce the number of people on death row to those who are smoking gun, and high quality evidence based free confessions (don't want anyone cohersed ) The rest can go to the life in prison category.

As for this ass clown. I really don't care if he did not know what he was doing. In most cases like this the person knew they were supposed to take a drug to keep them from being a danger to society. They usually choose not to take it because they don't like how it makes them feel. He likely chose to not take the drugs and ended up on death row.

he made the decision to no longer take the drugs while he was supposedly sane.

That is a chain of events that lead to this murder and subsequent tour of death row.


Of all the killers out there I find these assclowns to be the worst kind. Because I can see the day when they say well he has served time in the nuthouse and some braniac doctor decides while medicated he is not a danger to anyone and the let him go and poof, off the meds they go and you get another dead innocent.




regardless of the rightness or wrongness of his conviction (I will assume for this argument at this moment that he deserves to be there)

Should you give a drug to someone so they understand what is happening to them. I think this is really irrelevant. No one sane or insane will want to be put to death. So having his understanding of the situation at the time when they are going to inject him with lethal chemicals is a huge joke. Who cares if he understands, he is going to be dead.

[de_day]

I think with todays methods .. it doesn't really matter. You go to sleep.

[Chuckiechan]

It's a shame he misses it.

As Woody Allen said: "I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens!"

[Epidemic]

I think with todays methods .. it doesn't really matter. You go to sleep.

Although it would appear to be tranquil. I don't know if it is any better than old sparky. I was under the impression that the electric from old sparky rendered your beyond pain virtually instantly.

A bullet although messy if placed in the head the brain is destroyed before it can register pain. nerve impulses travel at nearly the speed of sound. By the time the pain receptors fire there is no body to receive the message.

The real pain I would imagine is that time spent waiting for the countdown to reach zero. 1 year (last hope for appeal dashed to pieces), 1 month (hey man I only got 30 days left), 1 week (man this is the last monday I am gonna see), 24 hours (last sunset), 1 hour (last time I am ever going to eat), 10 minutes ( counting the breaths) 1 minute (I feel the mind numbing agent robbing me of consciousness)

the nice clean methods are just a facade. Guillotine, Rope 10 to 20 seconds of dam I am dead. Injection quiet death but you know it is happening. Gun absolutely painless. You don't hear it, or feel it.

[de_day]

I still think a public hanging.. for all to see would be a better deterrent. And not having a man or woman hang on death row for sometimes 25 or more years.. that's not justice for the victim or their families.