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.___
No part of executions in the USA make sense until you realize all the kayfabe about humane execution is to assuage the conscience of the executioners and has nothing to do with the condemned. If you actually start looking for cruel and unusual punishment in practice you see it literally everywhere, and if you point this out then all notions of prisoner dignity disappear in a flash and suddenly wanton suffering is “the point”. That is actually the truth, but it can’t be squared with the pomp and dignity our civilization loves to assign itself. Trying to square the state’s highfalutin morality with the reality of the its actions just leads to contradictions because its simply not consistent or logical.
Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking accurate. That’s the “justice” system I know. Cruelty’s the point, even when its an unhappy accident.