A team of med­ical doc­tors report­ed in the British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet that in 43 of 49 exe­cut­ed inmates (88%) stud­ied, the anaes­thet­ic admin­is­tered dur­ing lethal injec­tions was low­er than that required for surgery. Toxicology reports from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina revealed that post-mortem con­cen­tra­tions of thiopen­tal in the blood were below typ­i­cal surgery lev­els, and in 21 inmates (43%) the con­cen­tra­tions of thiopen­tal in the blood were con­sis­tent with aware­ness. Their inves­ti­ga­tion of lethal injec­tion prac­tices from sev­er­al states found that the guide­lines for deliv­er­ing the essen­tial anaes­the­sia drug thiopen­tal are flawed and that some inmates might expe­ri­ence aware­ness and suf­fer­ing dur­ing their exe­cu­tion. In Texas and Virginia, the researchers found that those admin­is­ter­ing thiopen­tal dur­ing lethal injec­tions had no train­ing, and that the drug was admin­is­tered remote­ly with no mon­i­tor­ing for anaes­the­sia. The study also found that in these states no records were kept regard­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of thiopen­tal and no peer-review was done. The report con­cludes, ​“Failures in pro­to­col design, imple­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing and review might have led to the unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing of at least some of those exe­cut­ed. Because par­tic­i­pa­tion of doc­tors in pro­to­col design or exe­cu­tion is eth­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it­ed, ade­quate anaes­the­sia can­not be cer­tain. Therefore, to pre­vent unnec­es­sary cru­el­ty and suf­fer­ing, ces­sa­tion and pub­lic review of lethal injec­tion is war­rant­ed.” (The Lancet, Volume 365, Page 1412, April 16, 2005). See Methods of Execution.

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