Holy shit - execution botched in Oklahoma tonight so second execution

[Chan790]

97. Veterinary euthanasia is not always gentle.

One of my friends from college is a large animal vet out in Oklahoma. Prior to becoming a vet, he'd never owned a gun...now there's one in his kit bag. Sometimes when you euthanize large animals like horses, cows and grazing ruminants (sheep, goats, alpaca, etc.) if the drugs are old, dilute or simply have been dosed wrong (into the vial, not by him) the outcome is to induce torturous but ultimately-fatal seizures and convulsions...the gun is for delivering an immediately-lethal injury in those circumstances in order to prevent suffering.

Even small-animal euthanasia, such as what you're probably thinking of, is not without such complications. Often, only the sedative agent will be administered in the presence of the owner for this reason. You get to hold and comfort your animal as they drift into sedation where the paralytic and lethal agent are administered subsequently out of the owners presence in case there are these kinds of complications.

A large part of the comparative scarcity of incidents though results from the quantitative dosing...in animal euthanasia doses substantially larger than necessary are used to prevent these kinds of complications and sedatives are often administered. In the case of capital punishment, this is often not the case for a number of reasons...to allow the executed to remain lucid enough to make a last statement, to keep the condemned lucid enough to be consciously-aware of what is happening, to maintain the ability to reverse or halt the process after commencement in the case of a last second delay or pardon, to prevent premature death by respiratory or cardiac arrest,...