Ohio Determined To Start Killing People Again

When you can't even tell the truth to yourself about what you are doing, it's a pretty good indication that what you are doing is wrong.

An activist against the death penalty displays his sign outside Greensville prison on September 23, 2010 in Jarratt, Virgina, just hours before the scheduled execution of Teresa Lewis, the first woman to be executed in southern Virginia in almost 100 years. The 41-year-old Lewis is to be given a lethal injection at 9:00 pm Thursday night, September 23, 2010 (0100 GMT Friday) at Greensville prison. AFP PHOTO / Edouard Guihaire (Photo credit should read Edouard Guihaire/AFP/Getty Images)

(Photo by Edouard Guihaire/AFP/Getty Images)

Ohio hasn’t killed anybody since 2014 when they tortured a man, Dennis McGuire, for 25 minutes before he died.

It was a failure of humanity, but Ohio is eager to get back on the horse. From NBC News:

McGuire’s injection was made of the sedative midazolam and hydromorphone. Starting next year, the state plans to use midazolam with the paralytic rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction noted that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the drug combination in a case last year.

I’m going to let you finish, but can I just point out that you shouldn’t be allowed to call yourself the “Department of Rehabilitation and Correction,” when your business is figuring out ways to kill people. Death is not rehabilitative. It’s only “corrective” in the most fatal, “caretaker of the Overlook Hotel,” sense. WORDS MATTER, let’s call executioners by their right name.

Sorry, anyway… Ohio has a shield law which prevents the public from knowing where the state is getting their drugs. This is so the public can’t put pressure on the drug makers to stop helping to kill people.

You know how I know that capital punishment is morally wrong? Because increasingly every part of the process is shrouded in secrecy. We don’t know the executioner. We don’t know the drug company that produces death. We don’t even have transparency in the death itself — instead we use a masking agent so that the public doesn’t see the horrid ugliness of death. When you can’t even tell the truth to yourself about what you are doing, it’s a pretty good indication that what you are doing is wrong.

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In any event, the next man scheduled for death in Ohio is a person who was convicted of raping a three-year-old. Honestly, if we’re going to do this, we might as well just put him in the Horseshoe and let people throw stones at him till he dies. I’m positive enough people would show up, and it’d be more cathartic for the entire community.

Ohio to Resume Lethal Injections After Three-Year Pause [NBC News]


Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He can’t wait ’till Georgia turns purple enough that we can start ignoring Ohio.

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