Quote:
Originally Posted by Sly
Since when is it not? I would take firing squad, minimal chance of failure. Lethal injection is ripe with failure options, plus it's supposed to be obscenely painful and horrific.
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Correct me if I am wrong but lethal injection is not painful. They put you to sleep first, then stop your breathing, then your heart.
The intravenous injection is usually a sequence of drugs given in a set sequence, designed to first induce unconsciousness followed by death through paralysis of respiratory muscles and/or by cardiac arrest through depolarization of cardiac muscle cells. The execution of the condemned in most states involves three separate injections (in sequential order):
Sodium thiopental: ultra-short action barbiturate, an anaesthetic agent capable of rendering the prisoner unconscious in a few seconds.
Pancuronium: non-depolarizing muscle relaxant, causes complete, fast and sustained paralysis of the skeletal striated muscles, including the diaphragm and the rest of the respiratory muscles; this would eventually cause death by asphyxiation.
Potassium chloride: stops the heart, and thus causes death by cardiac arrest.