Executed Ohio killer Dennis McGuire took 15 minutes to die with untried drugs

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/executed-ohio-killer-15-minutes-die-never-before-tried-drugs-article-1.1581821

by dded • 13 years ago

5 4 13 years ago

na85• 13 years ago

Not sure if this submission is on-topic for Hacker News, but holy shit I bet that was traumatising for his family.

billyjobob• 13 years ago

Why do the Americans insist on using this form of ritual torture killing even when the correct drugs to make it work are unavailable? Guns are incredibly popular in America, so why don't they just put a bullet in the criminal's head? Much more humane, and a good opportunity to exercise their 2nd amendment rights at the same time.

There are other options. Decapitation and hanging are old fashioned methods that we used use in Europe before we become civilised. They are painful, but not as painful as this, and they are cheap and don't require any special drugs. Yet the alternative American method seems to be the electric chair! Again it's expensive, complicated, painful.

Americans seem to be the sort of people who if you gave them a free copy of Mac OS X that would run on any hardware they would decide to buy Windows 8 instead.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Hanging is less reliable than one might imagine; at the time, the electric chair was touted as a humane method of execution. Really it comes down to whether you buy into the idea of the death penalty or not. by the standards of American law, the DP itself can't be considered inherently cruel and unusual (because the Constitution contemplates the possibility of the death penalty being lawfully applied in the language of the 5th amendment). So all Constitutional arguments about the DP where culpability is not in question rest upon the justice or injustice of who it can be applied to (eg not minors, because they are below the age of criminal responsibility) or how it is applied - probably the easiest line to argue, because for any given method of execution it;s relatively easy to find examples of it going gruesomely wrong and you can then argue that it would be wrong to employ a method of execution where you knew in advance of such a possibility.

Obviously I am drastically over-simplifying the legal issues here.

blakdawg• 13 years ago

".. while they were in Richardson’s garage, Joy came in and said she wanted some marijuana. Richardson further testified that McGuire offered to get her some, and the two left in McGuire’s car. The following day, February 12, two hikers found the body of Joy Stewart in some woods near Bantas Creek. The front of her shirt was saturated with blood. One deputy sheriff at the scene, Larry Swihart, also noted that there appeared to be a “blood wipe mark” on her right arm. The body was taken to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, where an autopsy was performed. The autopsy revealed that Joy had been stabbed twice. One wound, located above the left collarbone, caused no significant injury. The critical wound was a four-and-a-half-inch-deep cut in the throat, which completely severed the carotid artery and jugular vein. The doctor determined that Joy was alive when she received the wound, and that such a wound could have been caused by a single-edged blade shorter than four and a half inches, due to “how soft and moveable the tissues are in the neck.” The autopsy also revealed abrasions around the neck, impressed with the cloth pattern of Joy’s shirt. The coroner’s office also took vaginal, oral, and anal swabs. The coroner found an abundant amount of sperm on the anal swab, some sperm on the vaginal swab, and none on the oral swab. The coroner indicated that sperm could be detected in the vagina for days or sometimes weeks after ejaculation; however, sperm in the rectum could be detected for a lesser time “because the environment is fairly hostile for sperm, and * * * a bowel movement * * * usually will purge the rectum of any sperm.”

Executed Ohio killer Dennis McGuire took 15 minutes to die with untried drugs

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