If this won't stop it, you'd think, nothing will. Wednesday's ghoulishly botched execution in Oklahoma is but the latest in a string of such disasters that raise the issue of whether the small number of American states that apply the death penalty are even capable of carrying out this barbaric, low-tech ritual.
Lethal injection is supposed to be "humane". Of the 32 states that have capital punishment on the books, all use lethal injection as their primary method (though a dozen still offer electric chair or gas chamber).
Yet if any execution violated the United States Constitution's ban of "cruel and unusual punishment", it was that of Clayton Lockett. He writhed and gasped when he was supposed to have been sedated. The execution was halted, but Lockett died in the execution chamber some 40 minutes after the procedure began, apparently of a heart attack.
His lawyer described his ordeal as "torture". The sheer incompetence is breathtaking. Vets put down animals painlessly. Not, however, Oklahoma's executioners, when it comes to people.
Yes, the fiasco stemmed from the difficulties death-penalty states have in finding lethal drugs, now that some manufacturers are refusing to permit their products to be used. But the state's embarrassment was compounded by a messy legal fight as lawyers for Lockett and another inmate Charles Warner (who was supposed to die two hours later) tried to block the execution on the grounds that the drugs being used by Oklahoma were untested.