MOSCOW, July 26 (RIA Novosti) – A recent execution of US citizen Joseph Wood in Arizona, who died Wednesday only two hours after a lethal injection, proves that the US Supreme Court remains indifferent to rule in such cases on the transparency, John Blume, a law professor at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, told RIA Novosti.
“What I find truly surprising, however, is the Supreme Court of the United States indifference on this matter. While one can understand the Court’s initial reluctance to become involved in managing state’s execution practices, the current situation has become intolerable,” Blume said.
The expert criticized the current veil of secrecy about the source of the drugs and the protocols being used for executions.
“This type of needless infliction of pain and suffering seems to be precisely the type of cruel and unusual punishment the Eighth Amendment prohibits,” Blume said.
Media reports said 55-year-old Joseph R. Wood, convicted for double murder, was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m. local time, one hour and 57 minutes after the apparently botched execution started. Wood was seen «gasping and snorting for more than an hour» before he died.
Robert Blecker, the author of The Death of Punishment and a professor of criminal law at New York Law School, said this most recent “botched” execution offers yet another example of media distortion.
“There is no evidence whatsoever during that last fifty minutes that Woods experienced any pain – the attending nurse said his heart rate did not spike, nor did he show any other standard signs of high anxiety or pain,” Blecker said.
“What a single biased AP journalist heard as gasps – and counted as 600 – funny how he knew to count – three other witnesses heard as snores. His reactions were standard for someone undergoing anesthesia,” he added.
Blecker criticized the lethal injection is a terrible method of execution, and not because it might cause pain, but because it certainly causes confusion, conflating treatment with punishment.
“As a supporter of the death penalty but only for those who deserve it – and yet as someone who has long opposed lethal injection as a morally bankrupt method, I hope and expect the day will soon arrive when we can jettison this absurd execution method along with the make-weight controversy that presently surrounds it,” he said.
