The Daily Beast – The Death Penalty’s Gruesome Truth
02.06.14
The Death Penalty’s Gruesome Truth
Boiling, crucifying, drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, the chair, the firing squad, the 2-drug cocktail, the three—no matter the process, capital punishment will never be ethical.
The ethics of capital punishment, long at the forefront of centuries-old debate, have recently taken a back seat in recent years to practical matters. It’s not the why we weren’t concerned about, but the how.
First, a drug used for execution in the standard 3-drug “cocktail” devised in the 1970s, thiopental (also known as “truth serum”), is no longer available. Several years ago, the US manufacturer, Hospira, yielded to pressure from anti-death penalty activists and stopped making the drug while European companies stopped selling it to the United States.