Same. My cat (covered in dense fur, very dehydrated) was first sedated. She fell asleep (and according to the vet the second injection probably wouldn´t have been necessary because she was so weak) and then received the euthanasia injection. And it seems so much more humane than whatever this man (murderer he may be, but he was still human!) had to endure.
It honestly sounds akin to some sort of medieval torture chamber. And I suspect that the executioners aren´t approriately qualified. Seeing as no trained nurse or doctor would (or could) particiapte in this.
When no workable veins could be found, Blue Scrubs instructed the prison guards to flip the gurney backward so that the prisoner’s feet pointed towards the ceiling while his head bowed to the ground. Smith now found himself, curiously for a man of religion, in an inverse crucifixion.
Then the IV team left the chamber, leaving him in that position for several minutes. On their return, they righted the gurney.
Red Scrubs, swathed now in face mask and shield to protect himself from splattering blood, produced a large-gauge needle. He began piercing it under Smith’s collarbone “in an attempt to begin a central line IV in his subclavian artery”.
After five or six jabs, still with no success, a deputy warden moved Smith’s head to the side to provide a clearer run for the needle.
When Smith protested, the deputy warden clasping his head reportedly told him: “Kenny, this is for your own good.”
But these are not normal times, especially in Alabama.
On three occasions in the past four months, Alabama’s department of corrections has bungled its lethal injections procedure. In each case, IV teams struggled for hours to find a vein through which to pour the lethal cocktail set out in the state’s execution protocols.
A bullet to the head probably would have been more human and ethical than this kind of torture they managed to come up with.
The fact that the jury didn´t even sentence him to death but was overruled by a judge is absolutely mindblowing as well.