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 lethal injection chamber at a California prison.
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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.
Could using the guillotine be more humane than execution by lethal injection?
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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?
Guards take apart the death penalty chamber at San Quentin State Prison on Wednesday, March 13, 2019.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP
The Massachusetts Medical Society recently reversed its long-held opposition to physician-assisted suicide. A psychiatrist notes many physicians are painfully conflicted about participating.
The newly completed execution chamber at Ely State Prison in Ely, Nevada.
Nevada Department of Corrections via AP
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.
Gallows legacy. Albert Pierrepoint and the nature of the executioner.
Global Panorama
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…
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