Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (39 page)
‘Even if not actually condemned to death by these means, as many were, it is hard to see how a man, no matter how hardened to the stringent conditions of nautical life, could survive such an ordeal…’
Naval captains of most nations, even as recently as the nineteenth century, had absolute authority over their crews and took whatever measures they thought fit in order to maintain discipline. The seamen themselves were hard-bitten and intractable, control of them calling for the most punitive actions on the part of the ship’s officers when considered necessary.
There was, of course, a wide range of minor punishments available to the captain. Some of these were excessively harsh, sometimes resulting in the deaths of the unfortunate culprits. But other, more serious crimes, such as incitement to mutiny, striking an officer and the like, warranted the death sentence. Among the methods available were to be hanged from the yard-arm and being shot by firing squad. Another method was that of keel-hauling. Facetiously described as ‘under-going a great hard-ship’, this penalty was anything but a joke. Phrased in seventeenth-century language, when such penalties were widespread in most navies:
‘The ducking att the yarde arme is, when a malefactor by havinge a rope fastened under his armes and about his middle, and under his breech, is thus hoysed up to the end of the yarde; from whence hee is againe violentlie let fall into the sea, sometimes twise, sometimes three severall tymes one after another; and if the offence be very fowle, he is alsoe drawne under the very keele of the shippe, the which is termed keel-rakinge; and whilst hee is thus under water, a great gunn is given fire unto righte over his head; the which is done to astonish him the more with the thunder thereof, which much troubles him, as to give warning untoe all others to looke out, and to beware by his harms.’
The quaint wording does little to disguise the severity of the penalty, and even when couched in more modern terms the picture conjured up is little short of horrifying. In 1710 an English sailor, guilty of blasphemy, was:
‘stripped of all his clothes except for a strip of cloth around his loins. He was suspended by blocks and pullies, and these were fastened to the opposite extremities of the yard-arm [the cross-bar high up the mast and at right-angles to it] and a weight of lead or iron was hung upon his legs to sink him to a competent depth.
By this apparatus he was drawn close up to the yard-arm, and thence let fall suddenly into the sea where, by hauling on the pullies of the other end of the yard, he was passed under the ship’s bottom and after some little time, was hoisted up on the other side of the ship. And this, after sufficient intervals of breathing, was repeated two or three times.’
It should be remembered that the height of the old sailing-ships was considerable, the fall in itself resulting in possible injury being sustained on hitting the surface of the sea; and then to be dragged, half-drowned, across the hull, which was invariably encrusted with barnacles, limpets, molluscs and other marine creatures, their shells rasping flesh and muscle off one’s bones, must have been an ordeal in itself.
The very width of the ship meant that the miscreant would not rapidly surface on the other side, especially where the added refinement mentioned in the earlier excerpt was included, the firing of one of the ship’s ‘great gunns’. This would probably be aimed at the sea near to the ship ‘right over his head’, thereby sending shock waves through the water, adding further to his physical injuries.
Even if not actually condemned to death by these means, as many were, it is hard to see how a man, no matter how hardened to the stringent conditions of nautical life, could survive such an ordeal, especially when the sentence decreed that it should be repeated two or more times.
LETHAL INJECTION
‘At the prescribed hour, a sixteen-gauge needle and catheter is inserted in the chosen vein and connected via tubing to the machine. A white sheet covering all but his face, his heart condition monitored continually by a doctor behind a nearby screen, the execution proper is commenced.’
No one knows what it must really be like to be executed by hanging, electrocution, gassing or any other method, so it is mainly fear of the unknown which is the prevailing factor when the public is faced with the issue of executing murderers and the like. Civilised humanity demands that whatever method is adopted should be as swift and as pain free as possible, and few of the existing methods appear to give that guarantee.
Execution by injection, however, is viewed in a different light, for many people have had the experience of being operated on in hospitals, and recall the jab they were given immediately prior to being wheeled into the operating-theatre, the injection that brought about instantaneous oblivion.
So the proposition that deserving criminals should be dispatched by means of a lethal injection, in surroundings approaching those encountered in a hospital environment, is acceptable to many of those who would otherwise recoil in horror at any method.
Even less objection would be forthcoming were the process to include a prior injection of a tranquilliser. Knowledge of this type of calming drug is widespread, both on a personal basis and also in such eventualities as traffic accidents, trapped passengers being given similar injections while awaiting release. So, in layman’s language, if someone had to be executed, why not calm them first with a tranquilliser, then knock them out with the operation-type drug, followed by a drug that would kill them?
This is exactly what was decided in the United States in the 1970s. It was eminently possible on all counts, and, moreover, it offered the most merciful way of executing people. Research then established that the initial relaxation was best brought about by sodium thiopentone, a rapidly acting anaesthetic; then pancuronium bromide was used, a muscle relaxant to paralyse respiration and bring unconsciousness; followed finally by potassium chloride, stopping the heart.
If the drugs were administered in the correct dosage and with precise timing between injections – for too rapid a sequence would result in the drugs coagulating and changing their chemical make-up and effects – the condemned person would become unconscious within ten to fifteen seconds, death resulting from respiratory and cardiac arrest within two to four minutes. In addition, a preliminary injection of antihistamine would be given in order to combat the coughing and spluttering caused by the intake of such drugs.
So, the drugs existed, and experiments would determine how much of each drug was necessary, and the critical intervals between the injections. The only problem was – who would locate the vein in the angle of the victim’s elbow and insert the needle of the syringe? Such action called for great accuracy and expertise, it being essential that the needle was inserted intravenously, into a vein, and not into a muscle, the former allowing the drugs to bring unconsciousness rapidly, the latter delaying unconsciousness and causing severe pain.
At first glance it seemed that those best qualified to do so were members of the medical profession, but co-operating in such a method, in which a doctor deliberately puts a person to death, too closely resembled euthanasia, a practice which was, and is, unlawful in many countries. Accordingly, the American Medical Association forbade any co-operation with the method by its members on the grounds that doctors are dedicated to save lives, not to take them. The association, however, did not ban their members from pursuing their usual and acceptable practice of certifying that the condemned person was dead, following the execution.
That being the case, it was then necessary to train operators in the skills required, this being further complicated by the fact that many of those condemned to death were addictive drug-takers, some with phlebitis, others with veins too small or difficult to locate.
Other problems which faced operators, however competent, were mainly those involving any such manual operation, such as sticky plungers in the syringes, blocked needles and similar last-minute malfunctions. It was, as already stressed, vitally important that the drugs be injected at precise intervals, and this could be jeopardised without a guaranteed back-up system.
It was then that a brilliant technician, Fred Leuchter, appeared on the scene, to invent and perfect an automatic, computer-controlled machine, complete with integral fail-safe devices. Basically, his ingenious machine incorporates a system of syringes, the plungers of which are activated and propelled by pistons timed by a computer, thereby feeding the drugs in correct dosage, order and interval, via tubing into the subject’s veins. Furthermore, in line with the American principle of shielding the conscience of the executioner, the controls are duplicated, neither operator knowing which switches are live.
So successful was the machine in tests that most of the 20 states currently executing their criminals by lethal injection do so by means of the Leuchter invention, a device which is surely the closest approach to the long-sought-after, most humane method of dispatching a condemned person.
The procedure, as may be imagined, takes place in clean, clinical surroundings more reminiscent of an operating-theatre than a scaffold, a surgical operation rather than a prison execution.
On a hospital trolley, held down by Velcro and leather straps passing over their legs, abdomen and chest, their arms secured to boards on each side of the trolley, the condemned person is first given an injection of saline solution to ease the passage of the subsequent drugs. Then, half an hour before the due time, an injection of antihistamine is administered.
At the prescribed hour, a 16-gauge needle and catheter is inserted in the chosen vein and connected via tubing to the machine. A white sheet covering all but their face, their heart condition monitored continually by a doctor behind a nearby screen, the execution proper is commenced. The only visible signs of the victim being distressed are those of rapid breathing, sometimes choking and writhing, the latter limited by the strap restraints. And, within seconds, unconsciousness occurs, death following quickly, if nothing untoward happens.
But of course nothing
always
goes right, manually operated executions being particularly prone to mishaps. Sometimes the process of cannulating the vein took longer than the actual execution itself, causing stress to all involved. One example of this was when Peter Morin, sentenced to die in March 1985, endured 40 minutes’ mental agony as the operators endeavoured to locate and insert the needle into the required vein.
On other occasions incorrect amounts of drugs were administered, causing choking and convulsions; needles slipped out of veins, or tubes split, spraying the operators and victim with the drugs and causing inevitably disturbing delays while repairs were effected.
Oklahoma was the first state to adopt lethal injection, in 1977, but the method was not really put to the test until 1982, when Charles Brooks was executed in Huntsville State Prison, Texas. When the process of execution commenced, it was observed that he yawned, his eyes closed and his body went limp; after seven minutes had elapsed, the doctor pronounced him dead.
Women, too, were dispatched by this means, the first woman being Margie Velma Barfield, who had poisoned five people in order to obtain money to feed her drug addiction. Appropriately enough, she met her death by other drugs, in Raleigh, North Virginia, in November 1984, without any apparent pain or complication.
This method had interesting psychological effects on American society. Many condemned people, aware of its mercifully quick action relative to that by hanging or electrocution, favoured it and, given the option, chose to die that way. It is even conceivable that some juries, faced with making life-or-death decisions, hesitated less in passing a guilty verdict in the knowledge that the condemned person would not suffer unduly.
On the other hand, opponents of the method considered that such a more or less pain-free method removed its value as a deterrent, the ‘eye for an eye’ school vehemently condemning it as being too merciful compared with the violent crime or crimes that had been committed by the murderer.
Although it was not until the 1970s that lethal injection was seriously considered in America, it had been assessed in general terms by the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in Britain in 1949–53. While four prison doctors gave evidence to the effect that lethal injection was impracticable, and the British Medical Association stated that they would prohibit doctors from administering the drugs, the commission came to the conclusion that ‘the question should be periodically examined, with a view to a change of the present system [hanging] as soon as it can be shown that there are no longer any grounds for the doubts that now deter us from recommending it’.