Lethal injection is just as ghastly as the electric chair. It's going to speed up the end of the death penalty in America

The needle can be even more barbaric than the chair

By William Henderson -June 10th, 2014

There's been an extraordinary twist in the story of capital punishment in America, one which seemingly goes against the very grain of the nation's founding: the state of Tennessee has approved the use of the electric chair in the event that the drugs for lethal injection are unavailable.

This is a remarkable development – it means there is now a US state in which electrocution forms a default method of execution, something not seen since 2008 when Nebraska outlawed it and where it was the sole method.

Lethal injection plays a part in every US state with the death penalty (and the federal government). It was introduced mainly because of the electric chair, with its general nature and a number of massively botched executions in the 80s and 90s creating concern among states that electrocution would be ruled unconstitutional as a violation of the Eighth Amendment (which forbids "cruel and unusual punishment) and leave them with no means of carrying out the death penalty.

As that list shows, lethal injection also has a history of errors – a history which precedes the self-imposed embargo by European drug makers unwilling to see their products used to kill people. The affect that this boycott has had on the death penalty though, and will continue to have, is enormous: it's thrown lethal injection into exactly the same era of experimentation that plagued the electric chair at the turn of the 19th century when it was first introduced.

State Electricians, as executioners were known, did not "throw a switch", but turned the wheel of a rheostat. Insufficient current wouldn't kill the condemned; too much would cause burning and smoke. Executioners developed their skills on the job, learning to apply a high jolt for the first few seconds to hopefully cause immediate unconsciousness, then a less powerful but longer one to cause death.

The same thing is happening today, except with drugs instead of electricity. The second execution with neither sodium thiopental nor pentobarbitone – two barbiturates which have been vital to previous executions – used a benzodiazepine hypnotic and an opioid narcotic. It seemed tantamount to strangulation: Dennis McGuire spent the fifteen minutes he took to die in Ohio's execution chamber snorting and gasping for breath. Three months later in April, Oklahoma's first execution without barbiturates saw Clayton Lockett writhing in agony for 45 minutes before eventually succumbing of a heart attack. In 2010, a lawyer successfully challenged Oklahoma's decision to use methohexitone, a barbiturate derivative, as an anaesthetic, on the basis that it would be experimental and may lead to a "torturous" death. Indiana now wishes to use that very drug in its next execution.

If you have a strong stomach, take a look at these horrendous photos of Ángel Díaz, following his execution in Florida. That's with the original drug cocktail, by the way. Lethal injection was supposed to put an end to incidents like this, but comparing what happened to Diaz with what happened to John Louis Evans in Alabama's electric chair makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that history is repeating itself.

Watching someone die by any means is an assault on the senses; that's why lawmakers want to make executions as palatable as possible, and not least for those involved, because we know it affects them psychologically, as Jenny McCartney has discussed. The deck is stacked against them: they're medically unqualified individuals using materials they have no professional experience with, and the alternative is older, revived methods that are renowned for their imprecision anyway. Future botched executions seem virtually inevitable, and also bearing in mind that in just seven years, six states have abolished the death penalty, how ironic it is that the technology for legally sanctioned killing itself will surely speed up the signing of its own death warrant.