Stop

Contributor: Arthur Jones

What do you get when you add states’ rights, secrecy, the wanton proliferation of the prison industrial complex, and an unholy/unregulated barrage of lethal drug protocols? You get chaos. You get an increasing number of executions gone horribly wrong. You get a growing series of lawsuits and probes and autopsies. You get a lot of prison officials stumbling, fumbling, and running for cover. It’s wrong. It’s beneath the American people. And it needs to stop.

“No cruel and unusual punishment.” Remember that verbiage from the United States Constitution? Read the Eighth Amendment therein. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Remember that from the Holy Bible? Read Luke 6:31 for yourself. Executing death row inmates is one thing. Exterminating death row inmates is something entirely different.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the long, lingering, laborious execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood, III – a lawfully convicted murderer of two people who was put to death Tuesday afternoon in Arizona. Mr. Wood was given a two drug cocktail of midazolam combined with hydromorphone. This lethal drug protocol was supposed to put him to sleep and end his life within 10-15 minutes. Instead, Mr. Wood died one of the most despicable deaths in the history of the death penalty in America. It took two hours for Mr. Wood to die. Reporters present at his execution counted over 650 separate instances in which Mr. Wood gasped for air, snored loudly, and writhed in agony as the life was slowly snatched out of his body. It actually took so long for him to die, his lawyers had time to leave the execution witness room, draft an emergency stay of execution on humanitarian grounds, and have it heard by an Arizona judge – all while Mr. Wood was being experimented upon. He died before any lifesaving measures could be implemented on his behalf.

Where I’m from, there’s a word for this: torture.