You Decide, Only in America, painless EXECUTION

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Humane and homocide do not seem to be coherent terms.

Florida Panel Urges Steps for Painless Executions

A commission appointed after a botched execution in Florida recommended yesterday that the state take steps to ensure that condemned inmates have been completely sedated before injecting them with two potentially painful lethal chemicals.

The panel also called for more than 12 relatively minor improvements in executioners’ training and practices but made no recommendations that would fundamentally alter the way Florida conducts executions.

The one potentially significant recommendation in the report was tentative and indirect. Although the commission said the three chemicals now in the protocol could be used humanely if the other recommendations were followed, it nonetheless recommended that the state explore “more recently developed chemicals” to substitute for the paralytic drug used “to make the lethal injection execution procedure less problematic.”

Thirty-six other states have similar lethal injection protocols. They are under legal attack in scores of suits in many states, with inmates’ lawyers contending that inmates can face potentially agonizing deaths that would violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

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