Entries tagged with “Charles Brooks”
Facts & Research
History of the Death Penalty
,Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Dec 07, 2022
As Lethal Injection Turns Forty, States Botch a Record Number of Executions
On December 7, 1982, Texas strapped Charles Brooks to a gurney, inserted an intravenous line into his arm, and injected a lethal dose of sodium thiopental into his veins, launching the lethal-injection era of American executions. In the precisely forty years since, U.S. states and the federal government have put 1377 prisoners to death by some version of the method. Touted as swift and painless and a more humane way to die — just as execution proponents had said nearly a century before about…