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A Botched Execution

By Jonathan Simor

To "botch" something is to carry out a task "badly or carelessly."  Oklahoma's botched execution Tuesday, April 29, 2014, demonstrated that word in its absolute in-glory.  (read the New York Times account here).  Badly?  Executions always cause at least psychological pain.  Even if everything goes perfectly, the physical pains involved in injecting the drugs may not be trivial either, especially when stripped of its normal healing association and replaced by the grimmest. Still, an execution can be carried out badly in countless ways when it causes additional anxiety, humiliation, and physical pain.  The execution of Clayton Lockett as witnessed by reporters was badly done in just this sense.  Prison officials said Lockett's vein "exploded...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on April 30, 2014 (boomark / email).