Stuff You Should Know - Is lethal injection humane?

Episode Date: December 19, 2013

Since the Supreme Court's ban on capital punishment was reversed, states have sought a humane method of killing sentenced criminals. They settled on lethal injection, but is this quasi-medical means of killing as quick and painless as we think? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and this is Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Greetings. This is not a capital punishment show, although we won't deal with that, obviously, but we at some point will probably do a full episode on capital punishment.

I would guess, wouldn't you imagine? We have an article on it and we're going to touch on it here with lethal injections. Yeah, and just coming across some stuff on the electric chair, it to me seems like it deserves its own episode as well because it's so nuts. It sounds like we're cooking up a suite. Yeah, the capital punishment suite. We come up with the best suites, don't we? Well, it's a big deal.

You know, it's important. I agree. To cover, you know. You know, Chuck, about 14 hours ago, a guy named Joseph Paul Franklin, I can't remember what he, his birth name was, but he legally changed his name to Joseph Paul after in honor of Joseph Paul Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist. What a nice guy. He must be to change his name to that.

Right. So Missouri just executed him at 12.01 Wednesday, November 19th. Yeah. It's today the 19th of the 20th. One of those two. And actually, hustler publisher Larry Flint was making a big hubbub trying to keep the man from being killed, which is somewhat ironic, although not really if you followed Larry Flint's career because he was the man who supposedly shot Larry Flint and paralyzed him

for life. Supposedly was he not convicted of that? No, he had, he confessed to it and it was quite possible. The reason that he gave for doing it was because hustler, it had some, some interracial spread that the guy didn't like, like, yeah, sure. And he was targeting interracial couples. Gotcha. He shot a couple of black kids in Ohio, I believe, and he was killed in Missouri because

he randomly picked St. Louis out of the phone book and went and found a synagogue and just sat outside and took shots at people as they came out of a bar mitzvah. So he's racist. He's an anti-Semite. He also had serious mental health issues as well. Andy shot Larry Flint. But he was executed. And the whole reason that Larry Flint was creating this hubbub about not killing this

guy, one, Flint had a famous quote from the last news cycle that he didn't think the government should be in the business of killing people, so he's against capital punishment anyway. Are you going to say it like Larry Flint? I don't do a very good Larry Flint. You put some marbles in your mouth. Right. Yeah. You're going to try?

No. So he just doesn't think that the death penalty is a good thing. Right. Anyway, he's an abolitionist, you would say. And then secondly, he filed a suit to have the name of the supplier of the drug that was going to be used in the lethal injection revealed, unsealed, because it's secret. And it's not supposed to be secret, but as we'll find out, states recently have had to scramble to come up with the drugs to execute prisoners of the state.

Yeah. There's a big thing going on that we'll talk about, but that was the most recent execution in the United States, which makes 35 for the year. And all but one of those were lethal injections, the other one being the electric chair. Yeah, it is fast to become the go-to method for most states and many countries, if you're going to get capital punishment going, then you're probably going to do it by way of lethal injection these days. Yeah.

But it's also the newest one too, and it came out of this, well, basically what amounted to an abolitionist movement in the 1960s and 70s that saw it to just get rid of the death penalty. And that was the third major movement in the United States since the late 18th century, where people were just trying to get rid of capital punishment all together. Yeah. They did halt it in 1972 after Supreme Court ruling Furman v. Georgia, and they remember reading about this later.

Obviously, I didn't read in 1972, I was very advanced one-year-old, but they said it was cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment, violating the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. And then but four years later, they reversed that in Greg v. Georgia and said, you know what, maybe that is cruel and unusual, so let's come up with a way that's not, and they came up with lethal injection. Yeah. And the reason why that cruel and unusual had a lot of traction was because there were hangings before, and hangings are very, very messy, if the noose isn't right, the head

can pop right off, or if the neck isn't broken, the person just hangs there and suffocates for a minute or two and then dies. And then electrocution is really, really awful, too. I was reading a list of botched executions, and electrocutions are very frequently botched. People, their heads catch fire, blood comes out of their eyes, it's really awful stuff. So there was this idea that the whole point of this is retributive. You did something so bad that we as a society have decided that you can't live any longer, but we as a society aren't as cruel as you are.

The point isn't to make you suffer, it's just to take your life and to do it in the most humane way possible. Well, electrocution, hanging, gas chamber, none of those really fit the bill. So somebody came up with the idea of lethal injection, but this wasn't the first time that it was proposed. The first time was in the 19th century, I think. Oh yeah? Yeah, there was a guy named Julius Mount Breyer, and he was a doctor out of New York who said,

you know, this would work because it would be efficient, humane, and it would keep the person from having some sort of hero status develop around them that sometimes comes from people who are hanged. But they went with electrocution instead. Well in 1982, the U.S. became the first country to use lethal injection, and like we said since then, it's really become predominant. I think the current number of states that have the death penalty is 32 as of today. But it's tough because states have been repealing it.

It's dropping like flies. I don't know about like flies, but maybe like honeybees. Right, and those are states that have taken the possibility of capital punishment off of their books, right? So 32 is the number that have the death penalty, right? 32 have a death penalty. Not necessarily meaning that they used that in the past year necessarily. There's something called de facto abolition, which is basically like, yeah, it's on our

books, but we haven't used it in so long that we might as well not even have the death penalty. So Chuck, like we said, lethal injection is the most frequently used method in the United States, and it's fast becoming the same around the world. China picked it up after the United States, and they replaced their shootings. And that kind of led to, it seems like almost a domino effect throughout Asia of other countries picking it up as well. Yeah, the Philippines, Taiwan, Guatemala, they're in Central America. They have all gone to lethal injection, and right now I have, in 2012, 58 countries used

lethal injection in 2012 down from 67 in 2010 and 63 in 2011. And 140 countries have outlawed the death penalty worldwide. And like you said, states are kind of starting to abolish it. Executions are down in general in the United States. Last year, there were 43. This year, like we said, there's been 35, and we're fast closing out the year. But lethal injection is the go-to method of execution, and so we're going to figure out how it works.

That's right. Right now, there are 3,108 people as of spring of this year on death row, 98% are male, of course, because you don't find a lot of females on death row, because they're smart enough not to kill other people, generally speaking. Is that what it is? Yeah, women are much smarter. A lot of these folks have been on death row for decades, waiting to die. Maybe they're working through the appeals process, because that all has to happen first.

Some will die on death row without ever going into an execution chamber. It happens. Some people commit or try to commit suicide before they can be executed after their appeals run out. There's a guy in Georgia who almost successfully killed himself. He cut his carotid artery with a razor that a guard had given him, I guess, to shave with ostensibly. Here, take the razor.

And the guy, they rushed into the hospital, saved his life, and then executed him a week later. Wow. That's a funny country. So you're on death row, you've exhausted your appeals, you're finally going to get that execution order, and a date will be set in place for that execution. At this point, you're going to be moved from death row to a place called Death Watch. And that is basically the, that's the last stop that's your holding area for the last

days or weeks. Right. So Death Watch is both a physical place, like it's frequently in the same part of the prison that the execution chamber is located, or it might be in another prison entirely. Some states just maintain one execution chamber for the whole state and inside a certain prison. So you'd be transferred to that place. And then Death Watch also is, supposedly, they're supposed to watch you so you don't commit suicide.

And it's also your, I think, rights kind of open up a little more. You get visits from people, your treatment is a little better. I think you get a room with a view, as it were. And you start the preparation of dying, of saying goodbye, and of coming to terms with the fact that it's happening. Yeah. You know, the state of Texas has these Death Watch rooms on highway exits. Most highway exits.

You've got your gas station, your subway, and your, and your Death Watch room. I believe it. I'm kidding. But Texas executes a lot of people. It does. Texas bears, they execute a lot, but they're not the only ones that have all sorts of weirdness going on. They, 2% of counties account for like 50 to 70% of executions in the United States.

It just seems like Texas comes up all the time when they're like, the last time this method was used, or the first time this method was used, it's always Texas. Well, Texas was the first one to use lethal injection, like you said. Exactly. And yeah, they kill a lot of people there. Yeah. Not picking on you, Texas. I love you guys.

No, here, I've got one. Alabama. Okay. Yeah, it is, it takes a unanimous jury to hand down a life sentence, but it takes 10 of 12 to hand down a death sentence. Really? Yeah. And a judge can overrule a jury.

A life sentence jury? Yeah. And say, no, this person needs a death penalty and they do it frequently. Interesting. We'll pick on Georgia too in a minute. Okay. Well, Georgia was the one that executed the guy after saving his life for after the suicide attempt.

All right. Great. Great. I just wanted to make sure we doled out enough embarrassment for each state. So you're on death watch. You can be visited more often, generally by friends and family. We're in like the last 24 hours now, right? Yeah.

Your attorneys, spiritual advisors, you're going to get your last meal. That is not a fallacy. Whatever you want. They'll prepare for you. No, that's not necessarily true. Well, it depends. Generally, they satisfy your desire, but when does it not get satisfied? What state doesn't do that?

Texas? Really? Yeah. There is a legislation that was passed after this one. This one inmate ordered a meatlover's pizza, like 24 tacos, like this awesome spread that just reading it, I was like, oh man, I'm kind of hungry for this reading about this man's last meal and they didn't need any of it. Even still, there's probably $200 for the food, but it caused enough outrage in the

state legislature that they passed the thing where it's like, you can have whatever the prison cafeteria is cooking that night. That's your last meal. Oh, really? Yeah. There's a really great article in Lapham's Quarterly online for free called Last Meal. Go check it out. It's just basically this awesome history and contemporary evaluation of last meals.

That's pretty sad. It is, but it's really interesting what it says. There's a guy in Arkansas who was executed in the 90s. His name was Barry Lee Fairchild, and he pointed out that it doesn't make a lot of sense to give a condemned person a last meal. He said it was, quote, like putting gas in a car that don't have no motor, but like you have no need to take in food because you have no need to derive the energy from it any longer because you're about to lose your life.

Well, it's not about deriving energy. It's about enjoying one last thing. Right. But if you look at the capital punishment system, it makes no sense. It's interesting. I say, go read the article. I'm not getting the point across very well. Well, I mean, I see what he's saying, but it's not like you got to fuel up for the big

day. It's like, here, enjoy a steak. Yeah, I know. I'm just saying like it flies in the face of the rest of the criminal justice system. Oh, well, sure. Enjoy the steak. Then, you know, and time was they used to get you drunk like beforehand. That's what I'm talking about.

If you're going to get hanged in London, yeah, like from the prison to the gallows, they would stop and you they'd let you drink as much as you wanted and then would take you super drunk and kill you. Yeah, that's interesting because that could provide a more docile victim or a really weepy one, which would be really, yeah, or like someone who starts causing lots of trouble. You know, yeah, he wants to fight one last time. Exactly. Right.

But apparently I read somewhere that they sedate criminals or they condemned here first. Right. So that's kind of like a modern incarnation of taking them and getting them drunk, handing them a value. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so you've had your last meal, which may or not be awesome, depending on where you live. Yeah.

Your warden and your chaplain are going to visit. They're going to stay with you till the end unless you don't want them there. You can probably refuse any kind of religious associations if you want. Witnesses will get to all that, but the witnesses arrive at this point. They're kept away from you, though. They don't get to like walk by and say things to you. No. Because as a matter of fact, most witnesses are required.

Well in Texas, they can take potshots at you with their six shooters. Sorry, Texas. The witnesses pretty much across the board, I'm sure, are required to be totally silent the whole time they leave and are brought into the execution area. Yeah. Not like the people outside of prisons who are making lots of noise usually. Right. One way or the other.

Protest or kill them, kill them. Yeah. It's as ugly as this country gets, man. When you see the footage of people outside prisons at controversial executions, it's pretty bad. And then your final preparations, they're going to give you clean clothes. But you take a last shower. Sure.

Shower, get dressed, and then connect you to the old EKG, which is going to let everyone know if you're gone or if you're still with them. Yeah, they hook the EKG up to you. It's not hooked to anything yet, but they've got it like a... You're pre-wired. Exactly. Basically. And then once you're showered and dressed and wired up with an EKG, the warden and the

chaplain are hanging out with you, at the predetermined time, they will start to move you into the execution chamber. And meanwhile, the witnesses are there. Yeah. And let's talk about the witnesses. Like, the fact that there are witnesses at executions is actually the modern incarnation of a very long tradition. Like, we used to have public executions in this country.

Yeah. Like, thousands of people would show up, sometimes they would charge admission, and eventually that stopped, and only a select number of people were allowed to witness. But there's still witnesses, you know? Have you read about the last public execution? I didn't read that book. There was... I didn't either.

Okay. No, no. Just about it. Oh, okay. There was a guy named Rainy Bathia in Kentucky, who was hanged in 1936 for rape and murder, I think. And his execution was attended by like 20,000 people. The big reason was, it's not because they knew it was the last public execution.

I think they decided to stop that after this execution. There was a Kentucky basketball game after? Yeah. Is that it? The sheriff was a woman. So this is going to be the first execution in U.S. history ever conducted by a woman. And people wanted to go see how badly she was going to screw this up. And even though she didn't, the press still wrote that she'd fainted, that like everything

had been botched or whatever. But that's why everybody turned out. But there were charges from out-of-town reporters that people were having hanging parties, that they were drunk in the streets partying, that basically there was just a sense of revelry that shouldn't attend an execution. And that was the last straw for public executions in this country. But it got the idea that you need to have other people witness a death when the state's executing somebody just to make sure it's totally transparent.

That was carried on with witnesses today in executions. Yeah. I mean, that's part of it too. And part of it is also to give victims closure, the families that is victims. There will be sometimes family members of the prisoner too. And they are generally kept apart. Not always. Generally.

Yeah. The prison warden is going to be there. You're going to have medical people on hand, of course, to make sure it all goes as planned. It's pretty controversial, as we'll find. You've got your spiritual advisor, like we talked about. You've got your guards, state-selected witnesses. Maybe, I mean, there might be members of the state government there to watch it all go down.

Yeah. You've got media there. You've got what are known as reputable citizens. And those are basically just average everyday citizens that witness executions. Is it like a lottery or something? No. It's like you contact your state DOC and say, hey, I want to witness an execution. And they send you an application form.

You explain why. You have to be over 18. You have to explain why you want to do this. But apparently, the pool is thin enough that they're not real selective. As long as you don't say, because I want to see them bleed or something like that, they will let you do this. And apparently, when there was a surge in executions in the 90s, Chuck, departments of corrections were so hard up because a lot of state law says you have to have six reputable citizens

or 12 reputable citizens. That their pool was running thin. So departments of corrections were actually advertising, looking for people to witness executions. They had to have that. That's just silly. It's just that holdover from having the public be a part of this state monopoly on violence. It's stupid, but so much so that they're trying to force it now.

Well, I don't think it's a problem anymore. It was just in the 90s, like they were killing everybody. In the 90s? Yeah. All right. So you've got your witnesses there. Your execution chambers may have clear glass with a curtain pulled. It may be a one-way mirror where you can only see into the executed, into the condemned.

It all depends on your state, basically, but it's generally going to be a pretty quiet thing. Oh, yeah. No matter where you are. It's a whole group of people that are just being utterly silent watching you. Or if there's too many family members, they might have a close circuit feed going on in another room. Yeah.

If it's not roomy. And apparently in Illinois, if you're a family member, the only way you can witness it is via a close circuit TV in another room. In Illinois? In Illinois. All right. That's another state. That's a new one.

We haven't mentioned Illinois yet. Yeah, we didn't really make fun of them, though. I guess their execution chamber is small. Yeah. We can make fun of them. There aren't any seats in there. Nice state budget. You've got your timeline of events.

It's all very much scheduled, like down to the minute. You're going to have your person properly dressed. You're going to escort them into the chamber. I was thinking about this when I was reading this article, Chuck. Imagine just taking a shower too fast, and so you just kind of have to sit there on the edge of the bed with the warden and whatever spiritual advisor they throw at you, waiting to go be executed. That has to be the worst wait ever.

Yeah. I can't imagine it being much worse than that because they can't be like, well, we'll just get this started early. No. It's going to be a very delineated schedule, and they're just going to have to sit there until the time comes to go to the execution chamber to get started. So take a long shower? That stuck out to me, yeah.

The longest shower of your life. The saddest shower of your life, for sure. You might be rolled in like restrained beforehand and rolled in on a gurney. Sometimes you're allowed to walk there yourself, and then you're restrained once you're in there, and at that point they are going to go ahead and pre-rig you with the IV tubes to lead you in there. And then those, once you get in there and you're strapped in, they will be fed into what's called an anteroom, where the actual death cocktails await and the executioner

awaits. Yeah, it's like an enclosed room away from the eyes of everybody, including the condemned and the witnesses. Oh yeah. But you have two tubes, most states require two, there's a backup to one to serve as a backup. At this point you have your final statement, if you so choose. They'll read that out loud on the news that night.

Yeah. Just be careful what you say. Are we giving advice to death row inmates? It just occurred to me that we are. You can go on to departments of corrections websites, and most of them have last statements on there. Some are what you'd expect. Some are eerie.

I'm sure. No. And generally the head is unrestrained, so they can look around and stuff, although sometimes they do have a hood or a sheet. Again, it depends on the state and how they do it. So the condemned is strapped into a gurney, strapped down, but their head's under restraint. They've got tubes leading into their IV needles. And ready to go.

Yeah. I think now's a good time for a message break, and then we'll get into the actual process after. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all, and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now?

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay. So like you said, it's go time for a solemn moment. Yeah. Um, for a long time states were using something called a, a, a, a, well, basically an electronic lethal injection machine. Which makes sense.

It was what Kvorkin came up with basically is I'm not directly based on his model. It was at least very similar to it. But then they worried about mechanical failure. So they said, no, humans need to do this. I think they had mechanical failures. I can imagine. Yeah. Um, and so in some states you have one executioner and others you have a couple of executioners

and they're, again, they're in this anti room where the actual drugs are that the IV tubes are leading to from the execution chamber into the anti room. Um, and if you have a few different ones, a few different executioners, they're all putting drugs into IV tubes, but they, none of the executioners know which ones the real IV tube and which ones is leading to a mannequin. And that isn't actually a mannequin, uh, that, you know, that old trick, like they used to do the same thing with, uh, flipping the switch too. I think they had like several switches firing squads.

Yeah. Because they don't want the, uh, the one, any one person to have that weight that can always think, I guess I had a 30%, 33% chance that it was me. Right. You know? Yeah. All right. So I guess we should move on to the drugs that are used.

Um, it used to almost always be a three drug cocktail, but things are getting weird these days. I've noticed. Yeah. So in three drugs, you would have an anesthetic, a paralyzing agent, and a toxic agent. And those were used for years and years. And then due to some circumstances, a bunch of different circumstances that converged were in some cases down to one, like Joseph Paul Franklin was killed with just one drug.

Well, I looked up almost every single execution in 2013 used a single drug, uh, pinto barbed all. Okay. Which is an anesthetic. Yeah. And it's basically a substitute when they're in short supply of other ones. But I did see that it's actually illegal to use this drug this way and the manufacturer is Danish and was like, well, no, you can't use our drug that way.

Right. So they started fighting, uh, people who sold that drug to like state agencies. Exactly. It's very controversial. And states were, um, trying to get this stuff any way they could. So since it was banned for use by correctional facilities for executions, the ultimate correction, the DEA was actually raiding departments of corrections and taking their drugs. So, um, because of this ban, because of the drug maker.

And so first you had the drug maker, um, that was making penithal, right? Yeah. And then people were like, well, how about this? We have propa fall. That's the anesthetic. Penithal is. Right. Yeah.

And so what they were replacing it with was propa fall, which is Michael Jackson's milk that killed him. Did we hit it right this time? Yeah. Okay. Um, and then the maker of propa fall said, uh, well, if you, you can't use that to execute people, it's not what we made this for. Right.

And they said, well, TS, we're going to use it anyway. And so the maker said, if you use that to kill anybody, we're going to cut off supplies to the entire United States, including hospitals and you're going to have an enormous problem on your hands. Yeah. And so all of the hospitals contacted the departments of the corrections and said, do not use that. Like we can't have a propa fall shorted.

Yeah. Like we need it. So now they're turning to compounding pharmacies, which are generally regulated mostly by the state, not so much by the feds and, um, trying to get their hands any way they can on some sort of general anesthetic. Uh, and the anesthetic, ideally, um, if they were using penithal or penobarbital, they would use, um, if you were in a hospital and you were put under general anesthesia, they would use about a hundred milligrams of this stuff delivered over 10 to 15 seconds and

you would be out. It's an anesthetic. You wouldn't be asleep. You wouldn't be unconscious. You are under general anesthesia. You're not feeling anything. You're not anything. So that's a hundred milligrams for just general anesthesia.

When you're given a lethal injection of penobarbital, they give you five grams, 5,000 milligrams, not a hundred milligrams, 5,000 milligrams of this stuff. Yeah. And that's enough to kill you flat out. Um, and proponents of lethal injection will say they don't feel anything after that. Right. And again, that should just be enough to kill you, which is why a lot of states are just using that one drug now.

Yeah. And in the original lethal injection cocktail, that was step one. Yeah. Once they administered the anesthetic, they would flush the lines with saline solution and then, um, they would introduce the next one, which is a paralyzing agent. Yeah. That's basically, uh, the heaviest duty muscle relaxant you could ever imagine because it relaxes your muscles so much that your diaphragms and lungs don't function any longer.

Yeah. That's a serious muscle relaxant. Right. So you just, you stop breathing. So that's, that's way to die. Number two. Yeah. And that takes about one to three minutes, uh, for that one to take effect fully.

So then that one's been kind of abandoned because, uh, it's been criticized or the use of it's been criticized because a lot of people point out that that's really for the witnesses because without it, when somebody's dying, a lot of times they will ride, they will gasp for breath. So, um, their back will arch as much as it can when it's strapped down to a gurney. Yeah. When you administer a paralyzing agent, none of that happens. So the witnesses are like, Oh, look, it looks like he wanted to die.

Look at what a peaceful death that man just went through. So it's for the witnesses. And then number two, it could also conceivably mask pain. Sure. So if it's masking pain, then it's also masking a possibly inhumane method of execution. Yeah. So they kind of discontinued the paralyzing agent, um, but that was traditionally step two.

And then once that one was administered, so are you getting the point here that like they're really going the extra mile to make sure you're dead in the nineties through lethal injection? Yeah. And you know what? I might as well go ahead and get into this. We just put our dog down two days ago and they do the same thing with that paralyzing agent.

Three different things were injected into her. Just like the first go to sleep thing and then the second, uh, paralyzer and then the final thing like she's gone, but hey, let's just inject this just to make sure the heart is stopped. Was it? Okay. So it was the toxic agent, potassium chloride. Uh, I'm not sure.

I mean, they said it was a trade concoction for their company. I got to. Okay. So then it probably wasn't potassium chloride because I don't think that's proprietary, but in some states, the use of potassium chloride, the toxic agent, which is the third one, um, that's not even allowed for use on pets, but they were using it on inmates because it induces cardiac arrest because it could considerably cause pain. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. I'm sorry about your dog, buddy. That's right. I appreciate that. And hey, thank you to everyone. I put that on the stuff you should know while people were super supportive and told a lot of their own stories of their pets passing.

So I think maybe at some point I might put together a little like, like you did the pet costumes. I might do like a pet memorial thing where people can send in memorializer pets, stuff you should know. Anyway, um, I did find it interesting though, a that I picked this topic. Yeah. I kept wanting to send you stuff about it like yesterday and I was like, and I picked it knowing, I guess it was just this weird subliminal thing.

Like maybe I was trying to work through it or something. I don't know. But I did find it interesting, the triple drug cocktail and similarities. I don't think it was the exact same stuff, but it's the same process basically. All right. So, um, death from beginning to end five to 18 minutes after the execution order is given kind of just depends. Okay.

So that's ideally remember the execution order is when like it's, it you've moved into the, the execution chamber. Yes. And the warden says, it's time to execute the phone's not ringing. The governor's not calling. Right. So, um, that's when they start working on you, like putting in the IV tubes and all that stuff.

Right. Now remember the whole point of, um, execution of the United States criminal justice system is not to inflict pain or cause suffering. Right. You need to take that person's life and the most humane, efficient means possible. Right. Yeah. So what happens if you can't find a vein that happens very frequently.

Oh yeah. There's, there's a lot of cases of, um, the condemned, helpfully, um, saying, well, try this vein over here. I think this one, this one feels pretty good. Try this one. Right. Like helping these people like stick them to put these lethal drugs in them. Sure.

So, and that particularly is the case with IV drug users who have lots of collapsed veins. Um, it's also Chuck part of the problem when you don't have experienced medical personnel. Yeah. Which is one of the big controversies of lethal injection. Because if you notice, it has a lot of the trappings of a medical procedure, but it completely flies in the face of medicine. Sure. Because the Hippocratic oath says first do no harm, well, carrying out or even assisting

in an execution is doing harm. So the American Medical Association tried to pass a resolution saying, um, we're going to take the license of anybody who's involved in an execution. Right. And all the state said, no, you can't do that. We're going to protect the doctor's licenses because we need these people. That's kind of a conundrum, you know, like, do you not have anything to do with an execution and let some prison guard try to find a vein and stick this person for 60 minutes and prolong

the point from, okay, start executing to death. Sure. So this person's more aware and anxious and thinking about it. Or do you kind of throw your Hippocratic oath to the side and help this person's execution go as painlessly and humanely as possible? Yeah. Finding a vein is not too tough though. Uh, I was reading like botched, um, botched, uh, really executions and that's, that's the

number one that they can't find a vein. Yeah. Where are they feeding these people? You know, because they're not using heroin in prison. Are they? No, but I think if you used heroin for a significant portion of your life, your veins are collapsed forever. Oh, really?

Yeah. I don't think they grow back. Okay. So it's generally though a prison guard or somebody that works for the prison though that actually administers it, right? Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought.

And plus also there's another thing too. If, if they're not good at, um, delivering the drugs, if they're not practiced at that. Yeah. Um, the flow of the drugs, if you push it in too fast can cause a lot of pain and suffering. That's one. Right. That's another one too, which is another reason why, um, some states require that medical staff be on hand to assist with these things.

Yeah. I mean, there's really no humane way to put someone, you know, so that's, that kills somebody. Like you can't officiate someone with feathers. Okay. No. And it's true. But I was looking around like, okay, if lethal injection isn't even considered humane, which

a lot of people say like it's not, right, there's, it's possibly there's a lot of pain. Um, one of the drugs that's being used these days is called a medazolam and it's a sedative. It's not an anesthetic. So if you put somebody out with it, that doesn't mean that they can't feel pain any longer. Right. Um, but that's due to this shortage of pentobarbital. Um, people are using that. So they're saying, wait, we're using untested drugs.

These people are possibly feeling excruciating pain, but you can't tell because we're using a paralyzing agent. Right. What there's got to be another way to do this. And some people recently have been speaking up and saying heroin. I know. No. I think, uh, there's probably a few seconds when you're introducing the pentobarbital

where they're like, all right, this feels pretty good. Yeah. Um, no, it's called inert gas asphyxiation. Okay. So when you suffocate, um, apparently the pain and discomfort is caused by not being able to expel CO2, right? With inert gas asphyxiation, you are inhaling gas, it's not oxygen, say pure nitrogen gas, but you're still capable of exhaling CO2, which means that the whole process should

be painless, right? And unconsciousness takes effect in a couple of seconds, death, a few more seconds after that. So they think it's possible that they may have figured out a, the most humane method of capital punishment around inert gas asphyxiation. Are they like practicing that? No, but I suspect that if, if this kind of reform thing continues going on, right, we'll see inert gas chambers pretty soon.

Yeah. You know, the old firing squad is instantaneous probably. No. It's done right. Yeah, but it rarely is done right. That's the thing. What do you mean rarely it's done right? Give me a statistic.

Well, okay. Like how many shooting firing squads percentage wise aren't done properly? So I would probably say the vast majority. Really? Yeah. Um, you're trying to, again, if you're doing something humane and efficiently, you want to remove human error. So, um, finding a vein, introducing the drug at a proper rate, like all of these things

are subject to human error, right? Yeah. If you're putting a bullet at somebody from 50 feet or whatever, that's got all kinds of human error involved in it. I would say go read a, and I'm not an activist, I'm not being an activist here. Go read this article called, um, on the possible pain from various methods of execution, I believe it's what it's called. There's a guy in the 80s who basically went around and said, let me get all the evidence

I possibly can from the different types of execution that people are put through to figure out how much pain and how frequently they feel pain, how much they feel as well. And he came up with this amazing study and firing squads are not, they're bloody. They're not, they're not good. Oh, I know they're bloody, but I didn't know that they were botched so that people lived most of the time after being shot by eight dudes in the head. But that's another thing. They don't aim for the head.

A lot of times only one guy has a bullet or the, the chest, the chest. So you're shot through the heart, right? Is that like all countries across the border? I don't know. I'm just curious. I'm just saying, I would say go read that study. My money's on inert gas, inert gas, definitely not on firing squads, the guillotine. Well that came out of that one reform movement from the late 18th century.

That's as instant as it gets. No, it's not. Do you not remember our, yeah, we said it's possible that the head is alive for a couple of seconds. For seconds. Yeah. I feel like I don't even know you right now. I got one last one.

All right. So there is a huge disparity in the death penalty as a whole among races. So it turns out 89% of capital cases feature a black or Hispanic defendant. And then with victims, there's a big race disparity too. In death penalty cases in the United States, I think either last year or in the last few years, 77% of the victims have been white, 15% have been black, 6% have been Hispanic for the victims. So it's disproportionately doled out against people who have killed white people than it

is to people who have killed black or Hispanic people. And other was like 2% or something like that. Interesting. Here's the man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope.

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I got nothing else. So lethal injection. Man, that was a weird one, huh? Uh, well, I mean, this is touchy stuff, you know, uh, if you want to learn more about lethal injection, um, you can type that into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mate. I'm going to call this what a long, strange trip it's been because that's what Whitney called it.

Hey guys, I'm Whitney and I'm a 20-something band teacher from Provo, Utah. My husband, also a band teacher, introduced me to your show in 2009 when he was commuting one hour each way to Park City every day. When I started my current job last year, I started listening to you guys after I realized how crappy radio was and I exhausted the music on my iPod. I started one, uh, on episode one and just today caught up with the werewolf podcast. Wow. Yeah, not bad.

I was excited and sad all at the same time. We hear that a lot, actually. I know you get lots of emails and you're probably sick of them, but I felt like I had to write once I caught up during the last school year. I had my first child, started my new job and moved twice, the second move being into our first home, needless to say with all this, uh, change, I started to get pretty stressed and even depressed on top of all this. I teach beginning band to sixth and seventh grade, uh, kids.

My job is very exciting. I love it, but I can get frustrated and even develop a road rage at times. Stupid kids. Uh, your podcast was my sanity through all this dudes. I was able to focus my mind on exciting things like Barbie dolls and serial killers and it all made my day a little bit brighter. So I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the podcasts. I feel like I'm learning, keeping my mind engaged and enjoying your banter.

And I think my 18 month old daughter also enjoys since she's heard your voices since she was just a tiny thing. Hope you keep making them Whitney Werner. Thanks a lot, Whitney. From Provo, Utah, band teaching. And we are shaping young minds, 18 month old minds. Yeah. In utero even we've heard.

Yeah. People, for some reason, play us. Forget teaching your kids sign language. Just have them listen to stuff you should know. Exactly. Uh, if you want to let us know how we have helped your life out or how we've influenced the development of your child to a good one, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcastsatdiscovery.com. And as always, check us out at our awesome website. It's called stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the

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Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.