4/20/2016
Editorial: No Secret Killings, Please - Richmond Times-Dispatch: OUR OPINION
Editorial: No Secret Killings,
Please
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Posted: Monday, April 18, 2016 10:49 am
Virginia’s political leaders are working overtime to solve a problem that rarely arises — and
causes no harm when it does.
The problem, such as it is, consists of the inability to obtain lethal-injection drugs to carry out
executions. At present, the law allows condemned inmates to choose either lethal injection or
the electric chair. If the inmate makes no choice, the law stipulates lethal injection as the
default method. But if the commonwealth cannot obtain those drugs, then the state could not
carry out the execution, and the inmate would remain on death row indefinitely.
Alarmed by the prospect of such an earth-
shattering catastrophe, the General Assembly
passed legislation that would make the
electric chair the default execution method.
Electrocution is barbaric, hideous and error-
prone, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants no
part of it. But the alternative he proposes is
scarcely much better. He would allow the
po as =) state to contract with compounding
Gamer: vasa pharmacies that would produce new lethal-
804.272.1144
oe = injection cocktails — in secret. The public
would not be able to learn either the identity
of the pharmacies or pharmacists, nor the nature of the chemicals they produced.
As the ACLU of Virginia has pointed out, this amounts to little more than human
experimentation. It’s the sort of thing that might get you hauled before The Hague on charges
of committing war crimes if you did it to an enemy combatant. Is this a road Virginia really
wants to go down?
Regardless of the answer to that question, the secrecy is unnecessary and wrongheaded.
http/www.richmond.com/opinion/our-opinion/article_d3059d64-0574-11e6-9145-d7632607bd18.htm|
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4/20/2016 Editorial: No Secret Killings, Please - Richmond Times-Dispatch: OUR OPINION
Virginia made information about its lethal-injection drugs publicly available for years, and
nothing has changed that would require a shift in policy now.
The state’s legislators should reject the governor’s proposal — and he should reject theirs.
Nothing will be lost if the state’s leaders continue to deliberate over the issue until they get it
right. But a great deal could be lost if, in their haste to keep the machinery of death rolling,
they get it wrong.
http/www.richmond.com/opinion/our-opinion/article_d3059d64-0574-11e6-9145-d7632607bd18.htm|
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