The state of Tennessee has waited some 30 years to put her to death. What would a few more weeks matter? As we mentioned this afternoon, she had asked, as a show of the depravity of our society's use of the death penalty, to be executed by firing squad.
We can be sure of one thing, as midnight rolls past: she would be dead by now if the state had listened to her. As it is, leaving her in a permanently vegetative state is absolutely cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the eighth amendment.
Here is the latest -- but what on Earth is wrong with our society at the moment?
. . .A Tennessee woman convicted of murder survived two doses of lethal injection on Wednesday night before state officials suspended the execution and had her taken to a hospital for medical care, her lawyers said.
It was the second botched execution in the state this year.
The apparent failure came after dueling court rulings delayed the execution of the woman, Christa Pike, by about nine hours. The state had raced to go ahead with the execution before the day ended and to avoid having to reschedule.
In a pair of emergency legal filings, Ms. Pike’s lawyers said that while two syringes of pentobarbital, the lethal drug, had been administered, Ms. Pike had not lost consciousness. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.
It was not immediately clear what went wrong with the administration of the drugs, or what Ms. Pike’s medical condition was. In a statement late Wednesday, her lawyers said that she was at a nearby hospital but that they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials confirmed to a federal judge late Wednesday that Ms. Pike was receiving medical care. . . .
We are nearly completely alone in the 21st Century in still conducting executions. We are absolutely all alone in seeing a single state fail to execute two inmates in under a year.
It is repugnant to civilized society that we are putting people to death in the first place, but then to fail to complete the job, and likely leave her as a brain-dead vegetable, is something not even cave dwellers of 100,000 years past would have accepted. . . as an outcome.
Shame on us. We are scarcely any better than a 1920s lynch mob, tonight. Nor any better than the failed Pazzi attack (hired out by Pope Sixtus IV), inside the cathedral, at Sunday Mass -- in 1478, upon Lorenzo de'Medici. He was stabbed in the neck but survived -- his little brother died on the cold marble altar of stab wounds. Failed attempts, all -- and Pazzi was hung, and disemboweled for the effort. [Maybe that same fate ought to befall the Tennessee state prison guards?] Out.
नमस्ते
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