Liverpool Care Pathway - A "Cruel And Unusual Punishment"?

The death penalty - the ultimate sanction - is still widespread in the States. But controversy reigns. Is this drug safe for use in the US penal system?


This is Reuters –

Seven death row inmates have a case pending in U.S. district court in Jacksonville, claiming that the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments" should bar use of midazolam as the first part of the three-drug death protocol adopted by Florida's Department of Corrections.

In the two previous executions involving midazolam last month, the Department of Corrections said it was a humane replacement for pentobarbital, the sedative used previously, but refused to identify research or scientific studies, saying that would compromise security.

America's National Public Radio is also reporting on this important debate. This is NPR –

A Witness To Lethal Injection In 1989, William Happ was sentenced to death for the murder and rape of 21-year-old Angie Crowley. For decades, Happ appealed and lost. 

His death sentence remained, but the method of execution had changed since his conviction. Since 1924, Florida had used the electric chair to execute prisoners, but in 2000, facing pressure from the Supreme Court, the state switched to lethal injection. 

More than a quarter century after Crowley's murder, Happ's execution date was finally set for Oct. 15, 2013. But the state had a problem: Supplies of pentobarbital, a drug commonly used for executions, were running low. As the execution date approached, the state ran out of the drug altogether. 

So the Florida Department of Corrections decided to use a new drug — a sedative called midazolam that had never been tested for execution. Nobody knew exactly how it would work.

This is all something somewhat Pythonesque. This is dark humour, surely...

They are concerned for the welfare of a convicted killer, that this drug, Midazolam, is not safe to use. Its use is being challenged in Texas, also, and elsewhere.

This drug, Midazolam, has been in common use across the UK in hospital and in hospice, in home and in care home. It is a protocol drug in use in the EoLC Programme to limit life, in use in the Liverpool Care Pathway (LKP) and its partner protocols mentioned in these pages.

It is not safe for use on Death Row...

A medical holocaust has proceeded and there is none to raise the hue and cry.