Not Right In A Moral Context

Controversial execution botched in Oklahoma

Like most liberals, I don't like the concept of the death penalty.  There are too many questions about the true guilt of suspects, evident disparities in how different races are sentences, and whether suspects have available to them adequate legal representation.  However, if we are going to put prisoners to death, we need to do so in a way that does not constitute cruel and inhumane conduct.  For this reason, I can no longer support executing prisoners via lethal injection due to the inability for states to obtain Sodium thiopental, a fast acting anesthetic that was typically used for lethal injection before the manufacturer decided to stop providing the drug to states for the purposes of execution.

Ending lethal injection does not stop a state's perceived need to execute it's prisoners, and if a state is going to execute their prisoners it need to be done in a way that is safe, effective, and humane.  For that reason, if a state is going to execute it's prisoners, I would support doing to via firing squad, as was recently proposed in the state of Utah.  Yes, I'd rather that we not execute people, but if we are going to do it we need to do it right.  Not right in a moral context, but right in the method that we utilize.