News
Surreal spectacle: US botched 35% of execution attempts this year

Annual review reveals that seven of the 20 execution attempts carried out this year were visibly problematic
As 2022 draws to a close, a new grim distinction can be attached to it: in America it was the year of the botched execution.
In its annual review of US capital punishment, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reveals the astonishing statistic that 35% of the 20 execution attempts carried out this year were visibly problematic.
Several were agonisingly drawn out as officials tried to secure a vein through which to inject lethal drugs, leading lawyers to describe the process as a form of torture. Others were carried out in violation of state protocols. Some went ahead even though there were defects in those protocols themselves.
As a result of these severe hitches, seven execution attempts could be construed as having been botched. Such a high proportion of problematic executions points to a gathering storm over the practice of lethal injections, the dominant method of judicial killings in the US which this month mark its 40th anniversary.
The first lethal injection was carried out by Texas on 7 December 1982, when convicted murderer Charles Brooks was administered a fatal dose of sodium thiopental.
“After 40 years, the states have proven themselves unable to carry out lethal injections without the risk that it will be botched,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC’s executive director. “The families of victims and prisoners, other execution witnesses, and corrections personnel should not be subjected to the trauma of an execution gone bad.”
Executioners in Alabama, Arizona and Texas botched the procedures as they tried to secure prisoners’ veins. In Alabama, the past three executions in a row have been mired in this way, starting with the July execution of Joe Nathan James which saw a three-hour struggle to set an IV line.
The following two executions – of Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith – were called off because the execution team were unable to find a workable vein before the death warrant expired. In November, Alabama’s Reublican governor Kay Ivey halted all executions in the state while a “top-to-bottom review” was carried out.
In Arizona, the execution in May of Clarence Dixon ended in a bloody mess – executioners tried for 25 minutes to set the IV and resorted to performing an unauthorized “cutdown”, slicing into his groin to reach a vein.
The following month Arizona’s inability to set the lethal injection tubes resulted in a “surreal spectacle”, as the Arizona Republic described it. The prisoner, Frank Atwood, gave advice to the IV team on how to find a suitable vein in his body so that they could kill him.
In other botched procedures, Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee and South Carolina were forced to put executions on temporary hold after they were unable to carry out state protocols.
DPIC’s annual review notes that a key factor that all the botched procedures had in common was a veil of secrecy used by death penalty states to avoid accountability. Three states, Idaho, Florida and Mississippi, introduced new laws further obscuring how executions are carried out, including hiding the source of their lethal drugs to sidestep court scrutiny.
Paradoxically, while lethal injections appear to be heading towards a crisis at their 40th anniversary, taken in its entirety the death penalty in America continues to wither on the vine. Though 27 states technically still have the ultimate punishment on their books, in practice only six – Alabama, Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas – killed prisoners this year.
The 18 executions that were completed in 2022, and the 22 new death sentences, are among the fewest of any year since 1991.
This week the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, underlined the trend by commuting the death sentences of all 17 condemned inmates in the state to life without parole.
While the headline figures may be trending downwards, the systemic problems of the death penalty continued to be strongly on display in 2022. Two death-row prisoners were exonerated this year – Samuel Randolph in Pennsylvania and Marilyn Mulero in Illinois, highlighting the dangers that innocent men and women could be sent to their deaths.
By DPIC’s count, that brings the total number of exonerated death-row prisoners since 1973 to 190.
The overwhelming majority of people who were killed by death penalty states this year had glaring vulnerabilities. DPIC found that eight had serious mental illness, five were intellectually disabled, 12 had histories of traumatic childhoods, and three were killed for crimes they committed as teenagers.

I am an experienced financial analyst & writer who is well known for his ability to foretell market trends as well.

News
Violent Typhoon Mawar sets sights on Philippines, Taiwan and Japan after blow to Guam

The powerhouse typhoon is the equivalent of a very strong Category 4 hurricane as it approaches the northernmost island of the Philippines before turning to the north, continuing its damaging path.

News
Japan says scrambled fighter jets after Russian planes spotted

The country’s defence ministry says Russian ‘intelligence-gathering’ aircraft spotted near its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan.
Japan scrambled fighter jets after spotting Russian “intelligence-gathering” aircraft off its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan on Thursday, the country’s defence ministry has said.
One Russian aircraft travelled from Japan’s north down along part of its west coast, while the other took a similar route along the opposite coast and returned the same way, the Joint Staff office run under the defence ministry said in a brief statement.
“In response, fighters of the Air Self-Defence Force’s Northern Air Force and other units were scrambled,” it added.
There was no further information on the incident, which comes days after Japan hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit of Group of Seven (G7) – a grouping of rich nations – in Hiroshima city.
Japan has joined Western allies in sanctioning Moscow over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and has warned of the threat posed by Russia.
Its latest security document, which once called for enhanced ties and cooperation with Russia, now warns that Moscow’s military posturing in Asia and cooperation with China are “a strong security concern”.
Last May, Chinese and Russian military jets carried out joint flights near Japan immediately after a meeting of the United States-led Quad grouping in Tokyo. India and Australia are other members of Quad.
And more recently, Moscow has carried out military exercises, including test-firing missiles, in the Sea of Japan.
Russia considers Japan to be a “hostile” country – a designation it shares with all European Union countries, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia.
Tokyo had complex relations with Moscow before the invasion of Ukraine in February, and the two sides have yet to sign a post-World War II peace treaty.
Attempts to do so have been hampered by a long-running dispute over islands controlled by Russia, which calls them the Kurils.

News
France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that “banning these trips will only have minimal effects” on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support “real and significant solutions” to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42% from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
But this was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” it said.
It also called for “safeguards that [French national railway] SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service”.


I am an experienced financial analyst & writer who is well known for his ability to foretell market trends as well.
-
Sports2 years ago
Foxz168 is the most modern football betting available
-
Work1 year ago
EBL Portable Power Station Voyager
-
Apps1 year ago
Tiktok Video Downloader You Can Inspire To Use It
-
Technology1 year ago
How To Drain A Lawn | Fix Waterlogged Grass
-
Technology2 years ago
5 Strange Car Design Terminology, Description
-
Technology2 years ago
Advantages of Using Personal GPS Tracking Systems
-
Health1 year ago
Eight Reasons Why You Should Drink Ghee with Milk at Night
-
Digital Marketing2 years ago
What is the work of an influencer marketing agency?