Many states already abolished the death penalty, many states that did not abolish it yet, suspended it given the amount of wrongful convictions, prosecutorial misconduct that caused such conviction - up to the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Williams v Pennsylvania where the DA's office did not only obtain a death penalty by fraud, concealing Brady material and solicitation of perjury, but the DA who sought and obtained the death penalty by fraud used that conviction to get elected as a judge and blocked habeas corpus/appellate relief for the condemned prisoner 4 times.
Arizona invented an execution "protocol" which contains provisions so inhumane that you may wonder what was mentally wrong with people inventing it.
First, the protocol provides for a "contingency" - to revive the inmate, even with the help of defibrillators, if his heart stops (if he goes into a cardiac arrest) before the state has a chance to kill him.
Second, the "protocol" magnanimously "allowed", in fact, suggested, that attorneys for the condemned prisoners, PRODUCE the EXECUTION DRUGS to have their own clients EXECUTED.
No, I am not delirious.
Here are the relevant pieces of the protocol.
So.
At the time when
- death penalty states are boycotted by the international community and report "difficulties" to "obtain" drugs for execution, when
- the State of Missouri trying to use "secret pharmacies" to get such drugs were recently ordered by a court to reveal the name of such pharmacy;
- the State of Texas, even after purchasing such drugs, had them seized by FDA and had to go to court to get the drug back (which lawsuit, upon my information and belief, did not succeed yet still)
the State of Arizona expects as a way out of this "problem" to get the execution drugs from the unlikeliest of source - the condemned prisoner's ATTORNEYS, CAPITAL DEFENDERS who have a DUTY to FIGHT FOR their client's LIFE to the last SECOND of his or her life, are offered an "opportunity" to bring drugs to cause his DEATH?
Is it a thinly veiled threat that their clients have two "choices" - to go "peacefully" and painlessly, on their own "consent", with drugs provided by themselves, wherever they might find them - or suffer torture in execution?
That's the hint?
Are Arizona Corrections officials nuts?
They surely left their moral compass someplace.
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