NATION’S FIRST ONE DRUG EXECUTION
Categories: Essays
Written By: Billy Sinclair
On December 8, 2009, the State of Ohio became the first state to execute a condemned inmate with the use of one drug: sodium thiopenthal, a powerful, rapid-acting anesthetic sometimes used during operations. The drug is also known as sodim pentothal, often referred to in the law enforcement field as “truth serum,” and is occasionally used during criminal interrogations much like polygraphs. The drug makes the subject more compliant and willing to talk.
Convicted murderer Kenneth Biros was escorted into Ohio’s death chamber shortly after 11:00 a.m. on December 8th. It took thirty minutes for the execution team to find a vein strong enough to accommodate the death needle. Just as he was saying he was being “paroled to my father in heaven,” the sodium thiopenthal began to flow into Biros’ vein. Ten minutes later he was pronounced dead.
Did the condemned inmate experience any pain? We don’t know. I have never favored lethal injection as a “humane” method of execution. I believe the electric chair and firing squad are more preferable modes of inflicting immediate death. Yes, there were “botched executions” with the electric chair and even some with firing squads, but they were few in comparison to the number of executions carried out by these methods. As a matter of fact, Ohio elected to go to a one drug method of execution over its previous three-drug protocol because there were so many botched execution attempts with the three-drug lethal injection method of execution.
A 2500-volt charge of electricity through the brain or five .30-.30 caliber bullets through the heart produce instantaneous death. While a large dose of sodium thiopenthal may induce immediate unconsciousness, it does not produce instantaneous death, thus there is no accurate way to determine if the drugged person feels pain during the ten minutes prior to actual death.
Medical and legal experts have been critical of the one-drug protocol, saying its untested use amounts to “human experimentation.” Richard C. Dieter is the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. and one of those who has expressed concern about Ohio’s sodium thiopenthal execution method. He points to the introduction of the electric chair in New York in 1890 which was offered as a humane alternative to hanging.
“The [Supreme Court] held that death row prisoner received due process because the New York Legislature had considered the punishment method carefully,” Dieter told the New York Times. “In this case, however, everyone has taken the Ohio Department of Corrections at their word, without an adversarial debate.”
However, Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation (a pro-death penalty group in Sacramento), rebuffed Dieter’s concerns, telling the Times: “What kind of test do they expect? A controlled study with volunteers? Not likely.”
While some legal experts like Deborah W. Denno, a law professor as Fordham University, believe the one-drug execution method will be challenged through the courts, a local federal district court refused to stay Biros’ execution to give his lawyers time to have the sodium thiopenthal execution method reviewed. The U.S. Supreme Court also declined an opportunity to intervene in the execution. While this does not mean the nation’s high court will not at some point in the future decide to review the one-drug execution method, its refusal to stay Biros’ execution clearly signaled the court does not consider the issue a pressing constitutional matter.
Sodium thiopenthal effectively depresses the heart rate, much like suffocation, while it decreases neuronal activity. Eventually the heart and brain cease to function. It took ten minutes for death to be induced in Biros. He may have appeared to be in a peaceful sleep or a painless drug stupor. Supporters of lethal injection would say he “didn’t feel a thing” because he was unconscious, but that’s an issue which has not been subjected to any medical testing. The only evidence we have to go by is that animals are euthanized with sodium thiopenthal, and veterinarians seem to think the procedure is painless. But that’s a far cry from medical testing.
The bottom line is this: the Ohio Department of Corrections wanted to create an efficient method of execution, not necessarily a painless one. The State can now kill efficiently.
