Electrical death Gas Chamber and Lethal Injection Essay

Electricity
When people started to get executed using electricity most people had no clue how that would kill someone. Some believed that the electrical current forced too much blood to the head and that is what was killing them (Banner 178). Others believed that the electric shock constricted the arteries and blocked blood flow, or stopped the lungs from working (179). Two groups of scientist established that the usual cause of electrical death is ventricular fibrillation, which makes the muscles around the heart stop pumping (179).
Gas Chamber
In the late 19th century, Americans began looking for a more human alternative to hanging, one of the methods that they had found involved placing the condemned inmate into an air tight chamber and releasing into the chamber a poisonous gas (Banner 196). Gas was not an attractive option compared to the electric chair, it was believed that gas would take several minutes to kill someone unlike the chair that would kill instantly (196). Another way they thought of using gas was to lock an inmate in his cell and make sure it was air tight he could pass away peacefully in his sleep not knowing when he was going to die (197). This would benefit the prisoner by not experiencing any pain with his death and he would be spared the anxiety of attending a ceremony devoted to his own death (197).
Lethal Injection
Lethal injection can cause excruciating pain. Since the first lethal injection on December 7, 1982, over 1,000 prisoners in the USA have been executed by this method and it has all but replaced other methods of execution (Lethal Injection). Unless a call is received from state officials to stay the execution, the execution proceeds as planned (Lethal Injection). Each state that employs lethal injection is legally required to have detailed protocols for its practice, and though the set of rules differ from state to state, the process of killing a condemned inmate varies little, and begins with the lethal injection team securing the inmate to a gurney and connecting him to an electrocardiogram (EKG) machine that monitors heart activity (Death Penalty). At the warden's signal, the execution chamber is exposed to witnesses in an adjoining room, and in states that use the threedrug protocol the inmate is injected (Death Penalty).
Sodium thiopental or pentobarbital
Anesthetics intended to put the inmate to sleep (Lethal Injection).
Pancuronium bromide
Presumably after a member of the intravenous team determines the inmate is sufficiently unconscious, he is then injected with pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing. In most cases, the inmate's consciousness is again checked (Lethal Injection).
Potassium chloride
This stops his heart. In ideal circumstances, death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest while the condemned person is unconscious (Lethal Injection).
The process of lethal injection using just one drug follows nearly the same procedure, except the inmate dies from the one large dose of anesthetic, either sodium thiopental or pentobarbital (Death Penalty).