The constitutional prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ has shaped legal discourse around failed executions, but courts have not stopped states from attempting to execute the same man again.
Articles on Lethal injection
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Florida leads the nation in executions in a year that has seen an increase in the number of inmates put to death nationwide.
A death row inmate in South Carolina chose firing squad over lethal injection and the electric chair.
These ‘custodial killers’ are often healthcare workers who murder helpless or dependent people in their care.
Alabama has paused the carrying out of death sentences after a series of cases in which the state struggled with the procedure.
The execution of Lisa Montgomery in the U.S. earlier this year demonstrates how society misunderstands the effects of mental illness and trauma on criminal behaviour.
The Justice Department has approved alternatives to lethal injections for federal executions. But no method of capital punishment has been without gruesome stories of what went wrong.
The promised benefits of lethal injection – a quick, painless death – have never come true. There’s not even agreement about which drugs are best for executions.
Many recent executions in the US by lethal injections have resulted in prolonged suffering before death. A historian asks: Could the guillotine be a preferable method?
A law professor from the University of California, Hastings considers why a moratorium in California could be influential.
The Massachusetts Medical Society recently reversed its long-held opposition to physician-assisted suicide. A psychiatrist notes many physicians are painfully conflicted about participating.
Nevada plans to use a new drug protocol for executing Scott Dozier, who murdered a 22-year-old. A scholar explains why this is problematic.
In the US, nurses take part in executions by lethal injection. They justify their role by saying it makes executions ‘safer’.
When drug companies refused to ship chemicals to the US for use in lethal injections it led to several botched executions, reopening the debate over the death penalty.
50 years after the UK first experimented with removing the death penalty for murder, one name has become our bridge to the hangman’s noose.
The search for clean and painless executions may have failed, raising questions about the constitutionality of capital punishment.
American exceptionalism on the death penalty is at it again, and this time we have truly outdone ourselves: we tortured someone to death. Last month, the Ohio execution of Denis McGuire using untested…
Ever since the time of the guillotine, doctors have been at the centre of the death penalty. Joseph Guillotin, the physician who suggested the device be used in 18th-century France, was actually against…
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William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
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Professor of Contemporary Philosophy and Literature, Brunel University of London
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Professor of Nursing, University of Hull
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Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Lecturer on Bioethics & Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University; and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine; Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, Psychiatric Times., Tufts University
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Professor of Criminology, University of Sussex
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Consultant Neurologist & Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham
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Associate Professor of History, Emory University
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Professor, Psychologist, Athabasca University
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Associate Professor of History, Wayne State University
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Associate Professor of Domestic and Family Violence, Queensland Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research, CQUniversity Australia
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Professor of Criminal Justice and Corrections, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco
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Professor of Law, University of Richmond