IMPERIAL KINDNESS

Ernesto Pérez Castillo

A recent comment on the BBC stated that "The shortage of fast-acting sodium barbiturate Pentothal as anesthetic agent, which is included in the lethal injection that receive death-row inmates is causing a backlog of “executions” in the United States.
Jeffrey Landrigan’s execution was planned for Tuesday, but it has been suspended after a judge questioned the "sedative good condition”, which would inflict great pain on the man condemned because of the drug contamination.
Given the national shortage of barbiturate, Landrigan’s defense filed a motion to determine whether Arizona broke away from the regulations of the Federal Food and Drug assuming the illegal acts by the State to get the drug, and the authorities refuse to confess where and how they got it.
Along with sodium pentothal, the one who will die is also inoculated with pancuronium bromide, a muscle paralyzing agent to stop diaphragm breathing: 100 mg of pancuronium bromide sufficient to cause death by suffocation.
The effects of using the drug are so horrible that there are U.S. laws that prohibit their use in animal sacrifice.
Indeed, the execution protocol includes a third substance, potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest to the offender.
In other words, you get injected by an anesthetic of questionable origin, probably contaminated and therefore ineffective, with a substance prohibited by veterinarians for its terrible effects, and then another poison to stop the heart.
Even the frequently criticized Amnesty International has demanded the annulment of the death penalty in the United States, who has also the record of being the only nation in the Americas that ordered executions in 2009.
And all this in the country that boasts of being the largest democracy defender in the world, and makes case against Cuba under the pretext of defending the human rights.