Death by lethal injection appears as if the condemned person just went to sleep. Looks can be deceiving. Anesthesiologists know that an overdose of pentobarbital, the barbiturate used for executions by lethal injection in Arizona and other states, renders the prisoner unresponsive — not necessarily fully anesthetized — before it kills by “flash pulmonary edema.” The drug causes part of the heart to fail, makes the brain obstruct breathing and floods the lungs with fluid. Autopsies show that the lungs of prisoners executed with pentobarbital are two to three times heavier than normal, Arizona Mirror reports.
In short, the prisoner drowns in his or her own body fluids, which an expert calls “one of the most powerful, excruciating feelings known to man.” Lethal injection was once thought to be the least painful, most humane form of execution. Now, experts liken it to waterboarding, a form of torture considered too cruel to use in wartime. Eight of the 27 autopsies cited in a 2019 deposition were of men executed in Arizona. Aside from problems inserting IV catheters in some of the executions, there were no apparent signs reported of what the anesthesiologist called “outward calm, inner terror.” On Monday, Virginia law Prof. Corinna Barrett Lain filed a “friend of the court” brief, advocating for condemned Arizona prisoner Aaron Gunches, who doesn’t want anyone advocating for him. Gunches is on death row for the 2002 murder of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband, and he has repeatedly petitioned the courts to go forward with his execution, saying he would rather be dead than rot in prison. On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court will set a briefing schedule that will likely lead to a death warrant so that Gunches’ execution can go forward. On Dec. 30, Gunches, who is representing himself case, filed a handwritten motion asking the court to forgo the formality of briefing and just set an execution date to “have his Long Overdue Sentence carried out.”
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