The death penalty is inhumane and wasteful. Texas should end it.

The report notes a “high number of states with failed or bungled executions. Seven of the 20 execution attempts were visibly problematic … as a result of executioner incompetence, failures to follow protocols, or defects in the protocols themselves.”

All three of Arizona’s executions had “significant problems,” together with the “surreal” scene of 1 prisoner serving to the executioners discover a usable vein for his personal deadly injection.

There had been 18 executions final yr, with 5 every in Texas and Oklahoma. The Death Penalty Information Center, or DPIC, nevertheless, cited “serious concerns about the application of the death penalty.” Among the executed “were prisoners with serious mental illness, brain damage, intellectual disability, and strong claims of innocence.”

Texas prisoner Andre Thomas, who has ripped out the hearts of members of the family, stabbed himself and gouged out each his eyes, is significantly mentally in poor health. His execution is set for April 5.

The report notes that the victims’ households objected to 2 executions. The executions had been performed regardless of these objections. In two different executions, prosecutors requested to withdraw their death warrants. These requests had been ignored.

In July, Alabama executioners “took three hours to set an IV line putting Joe James Jr. to death.” It now stands as “the longest botched lethal injection execution in U.S. history.”

In Tennessee, the governor stayed the execution of 1 prisoner when he found there was no testing of the execution chemical substances for impurities or contamination. The governor then canceled all pending executions and appointed a former federal prosecutor to conduct a examine of Tennessee’s execution course of.

Second, the DPIC cited National Public Radio
reporting
that “corrections personnel who participate in executing prisoners experience emotional trauma so profound that it often changes their views about capital punishment.”

It has lengthy been identified that an execution exacts an emotional and bodily toll on jail personnel, typically main these people to doubt any justification for the “ultimate penalty.”

An NPR reporter interviewed 26 present or former corrections employees who had carried out executions in 17 states and the federal authorities, and most “reported suffering serious mental and physical repercussions.”

To make issues worse, NPR reported “only one person said they received any psychological support from the government to help them cope.”

Of those that had been required to witness an execution, together with a minimum of one particular person in Texas, “none said they still support the death penalty, including those who were in favor of capital punishment when they started their jobs.”

In different phrases, some supported the death penalty when it was distant and distant. When they really needed to watch it carried out, their views modified dramatically.

This jogs my memory of my late buddy, the Rev. Carroll “Bud” Pickett, who spent 15 years because the death home chaplain on the Walls Unit of the Texas jail system.

It was Pickett’s duty to be within the death chamber with the condemned prisoner.

Pickett ministered to 95 males throughout their executions. At first, he supported the death penalty.