So today the execution of Morales in California was indefinitely postponed today when two doctors balked at actively participating in the execution. This situation was created after a judge ruled based on a study in the lancet, that the standard method of lethal injection may not render an inmate fully unconscious allowing them to suffer and thus may be cruel and unusual.

I have to say I approve of the decisions by the doctors involved. I tend to think the entire debate over doctor assisted suicide is just stupid if doctors have anything to do with executions. However, this issue is at least debatable.

What I don’t understand is why we are executing people with methods that have the slightest risk of causing pain. What is death not enough? Why must we be additionally cruel and make sure they die in an unpleasant fashion? It isn’t like their aren’t plenty of perfectly painless, even enjoyable ways to die. Why not end a killers life with an overdose of opiates? Or as the judge suggested an overdose of barbiturate (there is no good reason it needs to be given by a doctor or nurse but I suspect the judge’s ruling in this case was simply mandated by state law, i.e. it would be illegal for someone else to administer a controlled substance). Hell, given a choice between the current procedure and a large caliber precisely aimed gun to the head I would take the gun out of fear the barbiturate wouldn’t be enough.

I’ve never understood the societal need to inflict pointless pain but surely this case is just ridiculous. We are already killing them for their crime, is it to much to ask to do it in the most painless way we know how?