We've been doing lethal injections as the preferred method of execution in the US for the last couple of decades, but that has hit a roadblock, as the three-drug "cocktail" that is the standard package has been taken off the market (at least for US state governments; there are good medical uses for some of the trio of drugs which are still sold to hospitals) by the European companies that make the drug.
Ohio tried a new blend that can be sourced, but it took the condemned almost a half-hour to die; that starts to get into cruel and unusual territory, as the Ohioan on Death Row was beta-testing something that didn't work too well. Yes, you can argue with some passion that a half-hour of pain on his way off the mortal coil is not unfair payback for stabbing a pregnant woman to death, but vengeance is above our pay grade.
The news of the day on capital punishment comes from just south of the nation's capital; Virgina is fixin' to bring Ol' Sparky out of retirement-
Virginia lawmakers, facing a shortage of lethal drugs used to administer the death penalty, have advanced a proposal aimed at making the electric chair its default method for executions.
The House of Delegates passed a bill Wednesday that would make electrocution the go-to method of death for prisoners on death row if lethal injection is not available, The Washington Post reported.
That's a blind spot in modern conservatives view of a "Culture of Life", as Catholic thinkers and those Protestants who troll in their intellectual waters will often invoke; that's doubly potent as we just saw the Roe-v-Wade anniversary this week. Catholics are at least queasy over capital punishment, being against it in practice while allowing for it in theory, if I remember standard church teaching right.
When AC current was fighting with DC to be the standard for moving electricity, the DC fans pointed out that AC was used in electric chairs. We moved away from that gruesome side affect of alternating current in the late 20th century in favor of lethal injections, but European distaste of the death penalty might be moving us back.
Might those Europeans who American conservatives love to dis actually be right on this one?
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