Just a Little Prick

Thoughts on lethal injection by Rachel Bickley

They just feel one little prick when the needle goes in, then they go to sleep and it’s all painless.

This is the commonly held view of death by lethal injection.  In this article I’m not going to go into all the things that can go wrong with the drugs themselves.  I just want the readers to consider the reality of what can happen at the start of the whole process, when the IV lines needed to administer the deadly cocktail are established.

I want you to consider the following true story, an experience that happened to me a year or so ago, and brought home to me that inserting IV lines can be anything but painless.

As a regular blood donor I wasn’t too bothered when the blood service nurse said that they were no longer routinely using a local anaesthetic to numb the area where the needle would be inserted.  I’d had blood taken for tests without anaesthetic and the needle going in had actually hurt less than the sting when the local is inserted.  I am fit and healthy, with veins in excellent condition and over several years of donating blood they had always managed to insert the needle successfully on the first attempt.

So, I lay back and relaxed, expecting the same sharp pinprick you get when the doctor takes blood for tests.  I was completely unprepared for the sudden, excruciating pain shooting up my whole arm.  The nurse stopped with the needle just short of the vein and the pain subsided.  I told her to go ahead and try to advance the needle into the vein.  Same thing, it hurt so much I could barely keep from screaming out loud.  They withdrew the needle and it later turned out that the needle had hit a nerve, causing intense pain.

This incident made me think.  The nurse inserting the needle was an experienced expert who had done this hundreds if not thousands of times.  I am a fit, healthy thirty-something who has never used drugs and whose veins are in very good condition.  I was relaxed and calm, which makes it easier to locate useable veins.  Yet, it was still possible to encounter an unforeseen problem.  If the needle is being inserted by an inexperienced technician, into an inmate whose veins may well be damaged by drug use and are certainly constricted by fear and stress, how much greater the possibility of problems?

Another thought: when the needle hit the nerve and caused such intense agony, the nurse stopped immediately and when the problem persisted, withdrew the needle.  A prison employee inserting a line in a condemned inmate would certainly not show such consideration!  The needle would be inserted and left, still irritating the nerve and causing pain, possibly for around 30 minutes or even longer until the rest of the ritual is ready to proceed.  Among the many accounts of botched lethal injections are a significant number relating to problems inserting the needle.  You don’t have to look too hard to read of inmates having to assist the technicians in finding useable veins; of cut-down operations performed without anaesthetic.

A final question: how can poking an inmate with a needle for 40 minutes, cutting into his leg without anaesthetic, possibly be humane?  How is this any better than the agonies inflicted by the electric chair or gas chamber?  How can a supposedly civilised society allow this to happen.

Postscript: immediately after the incident described in this article, the blood service, with my full consent and encouragement, successfully took a donation from my other arm, this time with local anaesthetic!  Since then I have made several more donations, with local and without pain or discomfort.  The problem was not anybody’s fault and I will continue to donate blood for as long as I am able.