Virginia Senate OKs use of electric chair amid drug shortage
Source: Associated Press
Virginia Senate OKs use of electric chair amid drug shortage
Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press
Updated 2:25 pm, Monday, March 7, 2016
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) Virginia would be allowed to force condemned inmates to die in the electric chair under a bill the state Senate approved Monday as a response to the nationwide shortage of lethal-injection drugs.
Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, which set off a passionate debate in the General Assembly. The bill won approval with a 22-17 vote in the Senate, meaning it doesn't appear to have enough support to survive a veto if it's spiked by McAuliffe.
Like many states, Virginia has struggled to obtain lethal-injection drugs in recent years because drug companies have protested their use in executions. The short supply of the drugs has forced several states to pass or consider laws to bring back other methods of executions, such as electrocution and firing squads.
Supporters of the bill say death penalty foes are forcing the state's hand by making it more difficult to obtain lethal injections. But opponents say forcing inmates into the electric chair will actually undermine the state's death penalty by putting the constitutionality of the law at risk.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Virginia-Senate-OKs-use-of-electric-chair-amid-6875238.php
HeartoftheMidwest
(309 posts)Barbaric.
Barbaric.
Barbaric.
Barbaric.
Barbaric.
For shame.
Chakab
(1,727 posts)"pleasant" way for an inmate to die than lethal injection with the standard cocktail.
Additionally, lethal injections were botched far more than any other method of execution even before the drug shortage.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/search-humane-execution-flawed-no-such-thing-oklahoma
On the whole though, the fact that this nonsense is still going on in the US in the 21st century is totally absurd.
phazed0
(745 posts)stupid..
stupid...
stupid..
Big pharma is killing people all day, everyday. Now they try to take a moral high-ground. It would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)To take them out back and shoot them!
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,582 posts)Fast! Thorough! And it has that sickening "thud" of finality.
Disclosure: As a law clerk for a Circuit Court Judge I had a chance to see how arbitrary and political a death penalty case is. In this instance the verdict resulted in a life sentence, but with a different jury the result could have easily gone the other way.
My basic position on the death penalty is that we are telling the state to be our agent at the execution. As an agent, the state is taking my place, and hence it should only do things I would be able to do personally. Absent self-defense, I can see no moral benefit in taking another person's life, ergo, I'm against it. I wouldn't be willing to do it, so how can I tell someone else to do it? (FWIW, I feel the same way about war.)
Other factors:
It cost us about 10x as much to try the death penalty case as a regular murder case.
During the appeals, it costs the state more to defend its decision to put the individual to death than it would to keep him locked up for the rest of his life.
We could be wrong (it happens a lot more times than voter fraud).
As I said before, there can be a political component involved. From my experience, the prosecutor told the judge he knew it wasn't a death penalty case, but he had to try it as such because he had made the promise during election to try any death penalty eligible case as one. As I said earlier, it took us 10x longer to try the case because of this assh*le's ego.
If we can't use a guillotine, then how about a light saber? Or an elevator full of flatulent orangutans wearing gas masks?
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,516 posts)[center]
[/center]
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1997
Flames Leap From Inmates Head At Execution Window Opened To Clear Smoke; Old Sparky Called A Deterrent
By Mike Clary Special To The Los Angeles Times
The perennial American debate over the cruelty and value of the death penalty began anew here Tuesday after a gruesome electric chair execution in which flames leaped from the head of a convicted murderer as the switch was thrown. Pedro Medina, a 39-year-old Cuban immigrant, was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., but not before a prison official wearing protective gloves helped douse the flames which shot from the condemned mans head, and so much smoke filled the death chamber that a window to the outside was opened.
It was horrible. A solid flame covered his whole head, from one side to the other. I had the impression of somebody being burned alive, said attorney Mike Minerva of the states Capital Collateral Representative, which represents death row inmates, including Medina. In fact, you could smell it on the other side of the glass. Very strong.
While opponents of capital punishment quickly cited Medinas fiery death as graphic evidence of the barbarity of execution, state Attorney General Bob Butterworth said he hoped the prisoners final seconds would serve as a deterrent to others.
People who wish to commit murder, they better not do it in the state of Florida because we may have a problem with our electric chair, Butterworth said.
More:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/mar/26/flames-leap-from-inmates-head-at-execution-window/
[center]
Attorney General of Florida during "Old Sparky", Bob Butterworth.
Pedro Medina, before execution
graphic evidence of what the hell happened to Pedro Medina:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1587&bih=700&q=Pedro+Medina+florida+Cuban&oq=Pedro+Medina+florida+Cuban&gs_l=img.3...564.9378.0.9819.15.4.0.11.0.0.113.402.3j1.4.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.3.300.LF72-QKkrSc#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=Pedro+Medina+Old+Sparky [/center]
Final Hours? Medina Set For Execution
Vigil for condemned killer
Condemned Killer's Lawyers Hoping For Last-minute Stay
March 25, 1997|By Michael Griffin, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
STARKE As lawyers battled for his life in Atlanta and Washington on Monday, Pedro Medina awaited his date with Florida's electric chair for the 1982 murder of an Orlando schoolteacher.
Hoping to be at Medina's side today during the long hours before the scheduled 7 a.m. execution was the Rev. Glenn Dickson, a Gainesville minister whom the Cuban immigrant picked out of the Yellow Pages two years ago.
''I've prayed with Pedro once a month since he called me,'' Dixon said Monday. ''I've told him I'll be with him up until the very end.''
. . .
Medina was convicted of killing his former neighbor, 52-year-old elementary school coach Dorothy James. He was seen at James' apartment complex the night of the stabbing and was found afterward at a North Florida rest stop, asleep in her Cadillac. Prosecutors said evidence in the apartment also linked him to the death.
Medina, who was released from a Cuban mental institution before coming to the United States in 1980, claimed James was his girlfriend and that he loved her too much to kill her.
But a few days before, Medina's state lawyers invoked a rarely used state law banning the execution of people who don't understand they're going to die in the electric chair or why they're being executed. The lawyers said Medina had carried on conversations with dead people - including physicist Albert Einstein - and often faded in and out of reality.
One of James' daughters and McClain, a lawyer with the Office of Capital Collateral Representative, contend that the police did not look hard enough at other suspects and withheld evidence that could have spared Medina's life.
. . .
Pope John Paul II has appealed to Chiles to spare Medina. A Presbyterian congregation was praying for him Monday in Cape May, N.J., where Medina settled briefly after his arrival in the United States.
More:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1997-03-25/news/9703250266_1_medina-supreme-court-albert-einstein
Botany
(70,490 posts)If we are gonna have the D.P. then just shoot 'em and be done with it.
Fast, painless, and guaranteed results. 2 or 3 .32 caliber soft nosed slugs
into the brain stem and the job will be done although the witnesses might
really have to see that the D.P. is about the killing of a person.
BTW I oppose the D.P. because it takes way too long, it costs much more then
keeping the person locked up for life, too many people on death row have been
found clear of the crime that put 'em on death row, and in many cases the
legal help the person got wasn't the best.