NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee executed an inmate Tuesday without deactivating his implanted defibrillator, despite uncertainty about whether the device would shock his heart when the lethal chemicals took effect.
Byron Black died at 10:43 a.m., prison officials said. Shortly after the lethal injection started, witnesses said Black told a spiritual advisor in the room that he was hurting so badly. Black looked around the room as the execution started and could be heard sighing and breathing heavily.
Black was executed after a back-and-forth in court over whether officials would need to turn off his implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD. Black, 69, was in a wheelchair, suffering from dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and other conditions, his attorneys have said.___
Because people have rights, even felons.
I mean maybe on paper lmao.
Seriously though, I’m not against this guy getting medical treatment.
It just seems weird that the state cared enough to give him the device but not enough to turn it off.
Almost like the point was less about keeping him alive, and more about keeping him miserable?
Again, I want to make it clear:
The death penalty should be abolished, and American prisons need to be fixed so they’re not terrifying hellholes, but actual places of rehabilition.
This just seems like a weird pretendy half-step, to tell ourselves we care about prisoners, gone wrong.
Well now you’re changing your talking point.
Because it’s difficult to receive the death penalty. If it was that easy, they would have offed him in 1989. Plenty of prisoners have been falsely imprisoned for longer than that. You have to be abso-fucking-lutely sure if you’re going to have the State kill someone on the people’s behalf.
Yes. This is an unprecedented situation that the courts don’t have an answer for. That’s why it’s in the news. Nobody really knew what it would do or if it would be painful. Internal defibrillators are very new technology and the courts haven’t caught up yet. Hopefully this man’s experience informs policies and laws that prevent it from happening in the future.
Original comment:
Not sure how I changed points? Both are asking why Tennessee law makers where keeping this guy alive if they planned on killing em anywho, both are NOT on the side of killing people.
Granted re-reading it, the way I asked might’ve been more obtuse and unclear, but I’m also just a bit of a dipshit.
Any who, yeah fair. A lot of that weird minutia also comes from the fact that the state isn’t a single-minded Borg, but an organization run by many internal and external factions vying for control.