Arizona execution and capital punishment in the US

(Disclaimer: This post is topical comment, and not from my book)

In 2014 a man who was sentenced to death in Arizona took two hours to die. This is an eye-witness account.

This sounds like a description of Cheyne-Stokes respiration.

Someone exhibiting Cheyne-Stokes respiration for any length of time would score low on the Glasgow Coma Scale, with a characteristic EEG pattern.

In which case, he wasn't conscious, he wouldn't have been suffering, and resuscitation attempts would have been abandoned if he'd been in hospital. So, not cruel, within the terms of the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution, and sadly, not unusual either; in fact this type of thing seems all too common in the ultimate commission of legal sanction in the US.

So, arguments about the death penalty being archaic and uncivilized aside (and the US must surely find the company it's in surprising if it considers which other countries still administer the death penalty), it's just puzzling that so many states administer it so inefficiently. 

Another point to consider is that in the event of anyone waking up from this condition (which does happen), it's almost certain they would have suffered more or less disabling brain damage.

When there are tried and tested methods that work reliably and almost instantaneously – the guillotine, the firing squad, even judicial hanging when it's done the British way and the neck is broken (but not strangulation, as often happens in the US) – it seems odd that so many US states use this harrowing (for the spectators if not the subject in this case) and unpredictable method. 

I understand it's only unreliable because they can't get drugs that are proven to work from pharmacy companies that have branches in the EU, because the EU does regard the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment, and EU companies are forbidden to aid or abet. And of course, giving legal advice on what would do the job quickly and reliably is ethically impossible for any properly qualified medical expert. 

But given that this is the state of play, why do some states persist in using unreliable combinations and doses of drugs that give unsatisfactory results like this?

It must be that:

1. They're either indifferent to the quality of the experience for the person dying, or actually prefer that the procedure should be lengthy and harrowing, for the sake of a theoretical deterrent effect, or

2. They choose this method over methods that are proven to work properly because they're worried about the PR associations of such brutal-sounding methods. 

In any case, it would seem political or PR considerations are taking precedence over humanitarian ones.

As for the supposed deterrent effect of the death penalty, that someone will think twice about doing something if they know they could die for it: Dr Johnson was a keen supporter of the death penalty until he saw pickpockets at work in the crowd watching a pickpocket being hanged.