Dead is dead

I'm sorry, but this is one set of victims I'm not able to work up a lot of sympathy for:

Death penalty foes have warned for years of the possibility that an inmate being executed by lethal injection could remain conscious, experiencing severe pain as he slowly dies.

That day may have arrived.

Angel Nieves Diaz, a career criminal executed for killing a Miami topless bar manager 27 years ago, was given a rare second dose of deadly chemicals as he took more than twice the usual time to succumb. Needles that were supposed to inject drugs into the 55-year-old man's veins were instead pushed all the way through the blood vessels into surrounding soft tissue. A medical examiner said he had chemical burns on both arms.

"It really sounds like he was tortured to death," said Jonathan Groner, associate professor of surgery at the Ohio State Medical School, a surgeon who opposes the death penalty and writes frequently about lethal injection. "My impression is that it would cause an extreme amount of pain."

The error in Diaz's execution led Gov. Jeb Bush to suspend all executions Friday. Separately, a federal judge extended a moratorium on executions in California, declaring that its method of lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Certainly the Constitution forbids "cruel and unusual" punishment without defining it, which permits us to apply our evolving understanding of decent behavior. But to call what happened to Diaz torture is a stretch. At most, he had a few minutes of agony at the end of his life. How does that compare to the years of waiting before he knew he'd really be executed, the weeks of slowly creeping dread after all appeals were exhausted, all the ways he could have been killed before lethal injection came along as the current solution to the search for "humane" ways to execute killers?

One valid concern about lethal injections is that they are also medical procedures that some doctors believe violate their oaths to administer. Perhaps Dr. Kevorkian should be brought in. He clearly enjoys the process and seems to have developed quick and painless methods, and there would be the added benefit that many of those who oppose the death penalty by any means have also supported the good doctor's efforts.