From Ohio this week comes the latest story about how difficult America seems to find it to kill the poor souls incarcerated on their death rows.
They attempted to execute Romell Broom, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 14 year old girl 25 years ago, on Tuesday. But they simply couldn’t kill him.
A prison team spent two hours trying to find a vein in which they could administer a lethal injection, before giving up and returning him to his cell. A long history of intravenous drug use is being blamed for the state of his veins.
Ohio plans to try again next week but his lawyers are arguing that to try to kill him again would be unconstitutional. They say a week is not long enough for him to recover from the “physical and emotional trauma of the failed execution attempt”.
This link has accounts that describe what happened in rather more detail than you might want to read.
A lot of lethal injections in many American states were suspended last year as the Supreme Court had to decide whether it was cruel and unusual punishment, but despite the botch jobs they decided it was perfectly reasonable way to kill people.
Many Americans who are so accustomed to judicial killings are confused about why Brits find it confusing or repellent. And it is a bit of cliché that every new correspondent arriving in America tries to sell stories about executions to their weary editor until they too come to see it as an ordinary part of the American legal system. But some stories are hard to ignore.
And just this week in Texas another murder convict has lost his appeal against the death penalty even though he has now proved that the prosecutor at his trial was having an affair with the judge. He will soon be executed – by lethal injection.