Legal News

Eight Belle?s Euthanasia: More Humane Than Capital Punishment?

By Dan Slater

Did Eight Belles, the Kentucky Derby contender (pictured) that was euthanized on the track minutes after breaking both front ankles, suffer a more humane fate than Kentucky’s death-row inmates? That was the question raised on Friday, when Justice Stevens, speaking to lawyers and judges in Chattanooga, said he was surprised that Kentucky law prohibits killing animals with one of the drugs in a three-drug cocktail whose constitutionality was affirmed last month by the High Court in Baze v. Rees. (Find LB coverage here.) Click here for a story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

In Baze, a 7-2 majority upheld Kentucky’s lethal-injection cocktail. According to reports, the procedure involves strapping the condemned to a gurney and sedating the person with sodium thiopental, rendering him unconscious. The inmate is then injected with a paralyzing agent, pancuronium bromide — the drug not used on animals — which stops the breathing muscles, and finally a dose of potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Opponents argue that the cocktail poses an unnecessary risk of pain and suffering, in violation of the Eight Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Some anesthesiologists say that if a person is not properly anesthetized, the paralyzing agent will prevent him from being able to indicate distress, and that pancuronium bromide can make him feel as if he is suffocating. In that case, experts say, the third drug, which stops the heart, will be excruciatingly painful.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).