ThinkProgress – One Sentence That Could Help End The Death Penalty In America
By Tara Culp-Ressler
on April 10, 2014 at 9:00 am
Dennis McGuire struggled, choked, and gasped for air before he finally died, as his adult children watched on in horror. The state of Ohio used a never-before-used mix of drugs to kill him, and he appeared to slowly suffocate to death. Witnesses said the process took about 25 minutes, making it the longest execution since the state reinstituted capital punishment 15 years ago.
When Kelsey Kauffman, a retired Indiana resident and progressive activist, saw the headlines about McGuire — whose death sparked widespread outrage about the nature of lethal injections in the United States — she wanted to do something in response. So Kaufmann started a petition through SumOfUs, a group that allows citizens to organize to advance social justice causes.
Her ask? Get the American Pharmacist Association to add a sentence to its code of ethics to explicitly ban its members from participating in executions.