In the news recently, a failed execution attempt in Oklahoma has reopened the debate among opponents of the death penalty on the lethal injection process. In Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack when he was given an untested combination of drugs in what was intended to be a lethal injection. Lockett appeared to regain consciousness 20 minutes after the drugs had been administered, which stopped the execution process. As a result of the failed execution attempt, a second execution that was scheduled to take place two hours after Lockett’s execution was postponed. The White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, disapproved of what occurred. He stated that ,“We have a fundamental standard in this country that even when the death penalty is justified, it must be carried out humanely”.

In the United States, lethal injection has been in used in most of the 1,204 executions that have taken place since 1976. The lethal injection process involves an anesthetic called sodium thiopental, which causes the prisoner to lose consciousness before two other drugs are administered (one to cause paralysis and the other to stop the heart). However, the new untested combination of drugs that was administered upon Lockett was created in response to a decrease of foreign supplies by Europe. European manufacturers have been banned from exporting sodium thiopental to states that intend to use them in executions. This has led state execution officials to start improvising with new and untested drugs. So the question becomes how lethal injection can be carried out humanely when the new administration of drugs has not been tested in a way that will result in death without undue pain and suffering.

Prior to Lockett’s execution, Lockett and Charles Warner, the other inmate that scheduled to die after Lockett, had sued the state for not disclosing the details of the drugs that would be used in their executions. However, Oklahoma had refused to reveal their sources, even though state officials were fully aware of the dangers of this new lethal drug. Earlier this year in Oklahoma, Michael Lee Wilson, who was executed by the same method, was heard saying “I feel my whole body burning” during his execution. Despite this, Oklahoma executed Lockett anyway. With Oklahoma violating federal law that protects the rights of the accused from cruel and unusual punishment (i.e. Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution), it becomes extremely difficult to defend capital punishment when states are not appropriately administrating the process.

Unfortunately, these recent botched executions are not anomalies; the United States has a history of botched executions. Between 1890 and 2010, the United States executed 8,776 people. Of those executions, 276 failed in some way. Convicted prisoners have been unintentionally decapitated by hanging or hung twice after the rope broke the first time. Others have caught fire in the electric chair or been subjected to a slow death in a leaky gas chamber. Recent botched executions have occurred mostly due to human error, with drug administrators either failing to find a suitable vein to inject the lethal drugs or improperly injecting the lethal drugs leading to a prolonged and agonizing process.

Many would assume that with the advancement of science and technology, methods of execution would have improved since the 17^th century. However, research has shown that not only have the methods of execution not improved, but 88 percent of the nation’s top criminologist experts reject the notion that capital punishment acts as a deterrent to crime. Furthermore, research suggests that people who commit crimes are mainly concerned about whether they will be caught, not what might happen to them afterward.

There is also an economic burden on the state when the death penalty is imposed. Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty in most states is actually more expensive than a life sentence without parole because of added court costs for the state.

As a response to this research and the limitations Oklahoma faces with a lack of supplies needed to administer lethal injections, states that support capital punishment need to come to the realization that the practice can never be justified. Capital punishment in itself is cruel and unusual and does not succeed in its purpose to deter crime. In this day and age, capital punishment has shifted from being about who is receiving the sentence to how the sentence is administered, undermining the principles of criminal rehabilitation. One of the primary aims of the criminal justice system is to attempt to rehabilitate the criminal in order to both prevent the repetition of the crime by that individual and to improve the life of that individual. When the state chooses to murder that individual, rehabilitation cannot occur.