Many nations like Nepal have abolished capital punishment, however, others like the US, China, India, and Indonesia continue to use the death penalty as a means of deterring their citizens from committing heinous crimes. And while the official number of executions in the republic is not known,
China tops the list of countries carrying out death penalty with figures easily in the thousands per year, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the US.
Hanging was the preferred method of execution in the UK until 1998 when it was abolished under all circumstances. Many Muslim countries and India still practice hanging. In the US, both hanging and firing squads were used, but hanging became the method of choice.
Then in the late 1870s, scientist Thomas Alva Edison invented the incandescent light bulb that transformed human life as it was known then. Much to Edison’s chagrin, this electric invention influenced the discovery of the electric chair for execution. Gas chambers soon followed. But since electric chairs and gas chambers periodically malfunctioned, it was necessary for authorities to find a better, more efficient method. Finally the American government settled on lethal injections for execution.
Dr Jay Chapman, the medical examiner for the state of Oklahoma, first devised a cocktail of three commonly used anesthetic agents in 1977.
All three drugs are routinely used in hospitals including in Nepal for saving lives. In the US, the convicted person is first injected with sodium thiopentothal which is a barbiturate followed by pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, an extremely common drug used in intensive care units. This is then finally followed by a well-known, life-saving (except in this situation) drug, potassium chloride. Large quantities of potassium chloride guarantee cardiac arrest. Until recently, the Chapman protocol was standard US practice in carrying out the death penalty.
However, as the international campaign to eradicate death penalty gains momentum, the use of lethal injection has become a topic of acrimonious debate. Lately, several manufacturers of these anaesthetics made it impossible for the prison authorities to buy these drugs for administering lethal doses. So prison doctors figured that if they used one strong anesthetic agent such as propofol (which incidentally Michael Jackson overdosed on) they could bypass this problem. But manufacturers of propofol have also objected to its usage for this purpose. The saga continues.
The good news for Americans is that federal courts are handing down fewer death sentences (313 in 1994 vs 78 in 2012). The reasons are multifarious. Murder rates have plummeted. Eyewitness accounts, which formed the basis of many of these convictions, have now been found to be increasingly unreliable. It appears even rape victims commonly identify the wrong person. Memory is a poor guide. Finally, American jurors have occasionally sentenced the wrong man as proven by subsequent DNA testing leading present-day jurors to be very cautious in handing out death sentences.
Even as the debate on the ethics and utility of capital punishment rages on, more contemporary, humane ways of execution are being sought after.
SOURCE: Amnesty International