Author: John Washington
Position: Physician
Institution: Self
E-mail: jlw6550@hotmail.com
Additional Authors: None
Submitted Date: May 02, 2007
Published Date: May 3, 2007
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

1. If lethal injection is inhumane then so are the thousands of surgeries performed in hospitals daily.

2. Fewer people die, by a large margin and less traumatically from capital punishment than do additional victims of convicted but released murderers.

3. If the judicial system were competent to keep segregated from the rest of society those who should be separated from society for the rest of their existence, then capital punishment would be unnecessary. As it is now we kill them to prevent them killing us. That is a form of self-defence.

4. My suggestion would be to return to the Guillotine. The spinal nerves are severed immediately. There are many decades of empiric evidence with minimum malfunction and no complaints of botched executions.