Last night, for only the second time since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty twenty years ago, state officials in Arkansas executed three men simultaneously. Earl V. Denton, 47, Paul Ruiz, 49, and Kirt Wainwright, 30, were killed by lethal injection one right after the other.
Just a few years ago, those prisoners would have been killed by a massive surge of electricity. But Arkansas, like many other states, has turned to a procedure that requires special medical skills, devices and drugs — lethal injection. But this increasing involvement of doctors and medicine on death row has sparked criticism from human rights groups. Should those sworn to uphold life administer death?
Related Story
StoryApr 25, 2017Witnesses to Double Execution in Arkansas Say Prisoners May Have Suffered Botched, Painful DeathThe original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
Top
Media Options