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Botched Executions

Decent Essays

Hundreds of years ago, public executions were made to degrade and dehumanize a criminal in the worst possible way. In those days executions were performed by hanging, and that punishment was very demeaning to the criminal and his family. In 1791, the eighth amendment of the constitution had done away with that cruel and unusual punishment. In the modern era, criminals are now being executed by lethal injection. Why should an execution be televised? Especially in this day and era of reality television. Are viewers really interested in watching something so horrific, especially if it a botched execution? Executions have been held behind closed doors since the 1930’s with only a small amount of witnesses to view the execution. In the execution …show more content…

Many states have been executing fewer people in the past decade and some states like Maryland and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment altogether. Many people shake and are repulsed by the live executions they see on television from the Middle East. From all the Western Countries, the United States is the only country that still upholds the death penalty. Even though the death penalty is legal in most states, just a few of them do still carry out executions. Reason for this could be that Americans are somehow okay with the idea of the states using the lethal injection as the best way to put a sick human being to endless sleep. Botched executions have also been exposed as a large problem seemingly unknown to the American public. The drugs that have been used for the lethal injections also seem to be experimental, untested and are sometimes proving to be ineffective at killing prisoners without some form of excruciating pain. Just because the prison is using pharmaceutical drugs does not necessarily mean that this is a painless process. Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says sceptism of lethal injection is “not driven by sympathy for the defendants, who committed terrible crimes,” but rather, “(the public) doesn’t want to hear gruesome facts,” such as prisoners writhing in agony while strapped to a gurney as their loved one’s watch. When the procedure is botched, it is anything but

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