There's No Good Way to Execute a Person

Life can be ended with little, so providing a painless death in theory should be straightforward. In practice, executions are complicated by ethics, commerce, and industry, making prison killings via legal methods hard to carry out reliably. Botched executions raise questions about whether executions should be done at all. In Tennessee, staff attempted a lethal injection execution of Tony Carruthers, convicted of three 1994 murders. His legal representation argued he was wrongfully convicted and said mental illnesses impaired his understanding of his legal situation and impending execution. The execution attempt failed after hours when staff could not proceed as planned.

"Life is tenuous; it can take surprisingly little to rob us of it. In theory, it should be extremely simple to provide a painless death to someone who has been sentenced to die, to carry out a sentence. But there are so many complications; so many extenuating circumstances and factors related to ethics, commerce and industry, that actually killing a person in a prison setting, via the legal methods available, can become incredibly challenging. It's perfectly logical to ask why executions seem to be botched so often; actually finding out the reasons why is more likely to make you question whether we should be doing them at all."

"A Thursday morning attempted (and failed) execution this week in Tennessee, where the state intended to put to death a man named Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of three 1994 murders, although his legal representation have argued ever since that he was wrongfully convicted. This particular execution already would have been a bit of an oddity, as the seemingly mentally unsound Carruthers would reportedly have been the first American in more than a century to be executed after having represented himself at a trial."

"According to his representation, Carruthers' mental illnesses "continue to impair his understanding of his legal situation and his impending execution." But if we can set aside for a moment the question of whether someone in Carruthers' situation should be eligible for the death penalty, let's focus on what actually happened to the guy on Thursday."

"Which is this: Prison staff members attempted to carry out the execution by lethal injection, but after hours of trying they were forced to call it off after being unable to find a"

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