What Do Lawyers Know About Lethal Injection?

BY TY ALPER

In this Essay, I make the radical suggestion that various states’ lethal injection protocols should be developed with input from relevant experts in full view of the people in whose name they will be implemented. I further suggest that, in the wake of a number of court challenges that have forced states to go back to the drawing board with respect to lethal injection, these execution procedures should not be tinkered with, in secret, by lawyers and prison officials whose expertise in subjects like anesthesiology and pharmacokinetics is just as limited as one would expect it to be. Yet that is exactly what has been happening, and it is an under-reported aspect of the lethal injection debate that deserves a little sunlight.

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