Here is huge example of how a book can be misused. They didn’t ask me, the author, for permission. Note that I’ve
always opposed capital punishment…..
—Current news story:
Oklahoma is preparing to be the first state in the nation to execute inmates using gas.
After all the mistakes and missteps in administering the death penalty, what state are leaders looking at in their effort to prepare for this new generation of capital punishment?
The last time members of Gov.Mary Fallin’s office wanted to rush through executions using the wrong drug, her general counsel now so famously told the attorney general to “Google it” when he was pushing to allow for the use an unauthorized drug to kill Richard Glossip.
It was more than just Google that got Oklahoma to the point of making history as the first state to transform it’s death chamber from lethal injection to gas.
Lead researcher Michael Copeland teaches criminal justice at East Central University in Ada. His past research for the state has helped on everything from uninsured motorists to how law enforcement handles the mentally ill; this request was different.
“I knew it was a controversial subject and that’s not normally the type of help I give so that part did make me a little apprehensive,†Copeland told FOX 25.
There were three researchers who contributed to the initial report the legislature relied on to adopt nitrogen gas as the primary execution method. One was opposed to the death penalty, one in favor of it, and then there was Copeland.
“I’m sort of caught in between,†Copeland told FOX 25. “I do feel some concerns, but our question wasn’t to solve whether or not Oklahoma should have the death penalty. The question was do we have anything better than the electric chair which would have been the alternative had we not come up with this.â€
The attorney general expanded on that to include other inter gases, like helium, which according to the research the state relied on promise a quick and painless death.
“Typically within about 18-20 seconds they’ll pass out,†Copeland said. “Most of the time they won’t notice it at all; some of the time they’ll feel a slight bit of inebriation as if they had been drinking alcohol before they pass out and a very small percent of the time they’ll feel a little bit of nausea.”
Death soon follows. We know this because cited in the documents provided by the Attorney General’s office is the book FINAL EXIT. The book contains details of the experiences of people who’ve used gas to kill themselves.
“My book has no connection with judicial execution. It is purely for the terminally ill and those degeneratively ill to end their lives if their suffering is so great,†said author Derek Humphry from his Oregon home. “I’m sorry it is used, however indirectly, with capital punishment.â€
Derek Humphry began campaigning for the right-to-die, the assisted suicide movement, 40 years ago. He is opposed to the death penalty and says his work is about preserving humanity and dignity in death, not forcing it upon others.
Humphry did not know his research and experiences were being used to justify gas executions until FOX 25 contacted him after finding his work referenced in the state’s research on nitrogen. He said it might not be as easy for prisons to use gas because it is unlikely inmates will be willing participants.
“We have found that the only secure way of ending life via nitrogen or helium is by putting it into a plastic bag which is over the person’s head and secured at the neck,†Humphry said, “But how the penal authorities plan to do it I do not know.â€
The state is not commenting on how it will carry out inert gas executions.
