>Is he dead? No? How about now? No? Still not dead? Really? Okay, this time he’s a goner for sure. Oops, my bad…
Defense attorneys and death penalty opponents were outraged Thursday over an execution in which the condemned man took more than half an hour to die, needed a rare second dose of lethal chemicals, and appeared to grimace in his final moments.
“I am definitely appalled at what happened. I have no doubt he suffered unduly,” Angel Nieves Diaz’s attorney, Suzanne Myers Keffer, said after Diaz died by injection.
Executions in Florida normally take about 15 minutes, with the inmate rendered unconscious and motionless within the first three to five minutes. But Diaz took 34 minutes to die and appeared to be moving for most of that time.
Prison officials promised to investigate but insisted Diaz felt no pain and that it was not unexpected a second dose would be required, because liver disease had affected his ability to metabolize the drugs. They offered no explanation for the grimace or why officials did not adjust the dosage from the start.
Foes of capital punishment seized on the execution to argue that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, just as they did after two inmates’ heads caught fire in Florida’s electric chair in 1990 and 1997 and a condemned man suffered a severe nosebleed in 2000 during his electrocution.
Those cases led Florida to get rid of the electric chair and switch to lethal injection, which was portrayed as more humane and more reliable.
Two inmates’ heads once caught fire????? Okay, I’m sorry, but that’s some funny sh*t…in a macabre sort of way, of course.
What’s silliest of all in this whole situation is all the talk about “humane” executions. “Humane“? Doesn’t the fact that they’re being executed negate the whole humane factor? Their right to exist, as a human or anything else, is being rescinded as a penalty for the crime(s) committed, so talking about kinder, gentler killing is actually ridiculous.
Whether you’re for capital punishment or against it, an execution is an execution. There’s nothing humane about it. To expect it to be a quiet, peaceful journey into the night for the condemned is simply absurd.
The Lo Zone 
>i would have loved to see the surprise looks on their faces when the head caught on fire.Am I bad for laughing at that??
LikeLike
>the heads caught on fire?kinda reminds me of the movie "the green mile" when the electric chair when awry when the C.O. didn't add water to displace the electrical current or something like that.
LikeLike
>You're not bad for laughing at that, Sheletha.I'm laughing about it right now.
LikeLike
>You're all sick. The shame of it all!!
LikeLike
>Lance, the first thing I thought of was that scene in The Green Mile but I never knew what the purpose of the water-soaked sponge was.But I have to second the humane-ness of it all. Typically these people have murdered a person or two and I am sure their victims didn't die peacefully so why should they. At the risk of sounding like a Republican (poking my tongue out at girly-girl), this is one time I agree with an eye for an eye.P.S. The heads catching fire would have probably made me at least snicker before I realized what I was doing and then looked really really concerned.
LikeLike
>In the viewers gallery, I would've turned to the person next me and said, "Wow, I didn't see that coming…"Or, better yet, just start applauding and laughing.
LikeLike
>Or shoot milk out my nose…
LikeLike