SCOTUS Reviewing Lethal Injection

From today's Chicago Tribune. The Supremes will here arguments that lethal injection, as a method of capital punishment, is cruel and unusual punishment. The contention is that the three drug cocktail - an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a drug to stop the heart - can causes excrutiating pain if not administered properly. To me experiencing intense or prolonged pain is a valid cruel and unusual punishment argument. And the Supreme Court has generally agreed with that. This is why electrocution has generally fallen out of favor.

To date lethal injection has seemed like the least cruel way we currently have available. But in discussing the case on NPR today, reporter Nina Tottenberg said that the vetrinarian industry has dropped this same drug cocktail because of the pain animals went through.

Now, I'm well on record as opposing capital punishment but since our society is not yet at the point where we want to get rid of it I want the methods used to be as humane as is possible when killing the condemned. If vetrinarians have determined that the standard drug cocktail is too painful then it is not good enough for the state sanctioned killing of human beings either. Hopefully, SCOTUS will see it the same way. I won't be holding my breath, though.