NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee executed an inmate Tuesday without deactivating his implanted defibrillator, despite uncertainty about whether the device would shock his heart when the lethal chemicals took effect.
Byron Black died at 10:43 a.m., prison officials said. Shortly after the lethal injection started, witnesses said Black told a spiritual advisor in the room that he was hurting so badly. Black looked around the room as the execution started and could be heard sighing and breathing heavily.
Black was executed after a back-and-forth in court over whether officials would need to turn off his implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD. Black, 69, was in a wheelchair, suffering from dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and other conditions, his attorneys have said.___
I hate to be cruel but why give it to him in the first place?
I mean I’m neither for the death penalty, or medical negligence for that matter, but if you where good other executing the guy, why spend the money on that?
Seems like a waste of resources if you don’t value the guys life.
Either way adding more pain/suffering to an execution for no reason is fucked, even if the guy was a piece of shit.
Dude was in prison for over 35 years. The state had a duty to keep him alive and well during that time.
Until they didn’t when they executed him? Again, I’m cool with him getting medical treatment until his natural death. I don’t believe in the death penalty, or cruelty to prisoners.
But if you believe in killing prisoners, why would you keep them alive until its time to kill them?
Because people have rights, even felons.
Username checks out
No part of executions in the USA make sense until you realize all the kayfabe about humane execution is to assuage the conscience of the executioners and has nothing to do with the condemned. If you actually start looking for cruel and unusual punishment in practice you see it literally everywhere, and if you point this out then all notions of prisoner dignity disappear in a flash and suddenly wanton suffering is “the point”. That is actually the truth, but it can’t be squared with the pomp and dignity our civilization loves to assign itself. Trying to square the state’s highfalutin morality with the reality of the its actions just leads to contradictions because its simply not consistent or logical.