Lethal injection is inhumane

If Virginia insists on continuing executions, it should find the least painful method possible.

Both Florida and California suspended executions recently because of concerns about the potential cruelty of lethal injection.

Virginia should do the same.

Anti-death penalty activists have been claiming that the serene face of lethal injection may be a lie. The three-drug cocktail administered to the condemned includes a paralyzing agent that could mask excruciating pain caused by the drug that kills.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended executions in his state after the botched execution of Angel Nieves Diaz. It took 34 minutes and two doses of drugs to kill him.

Apparently, the needles that delivered the lethal doses were pushed all the way through the veins of his arms rather than into them, blunting the impact of the drugs.

"It really sounds like he was tortured to death," Jonathan Groner, a surgeon and professor at a medical school, told CNN.

A California judge extended a ban on lethal injection in that state, ruling that the state's "implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed."

Perhaps California's system can be fixed. The judge didn't criticize the method of execution, but the lack of professionalism and training of those administering the injection.

Virginia doesn't have that problem. The judge even cited the commonwealth as a model to be emulated in that regard.

But that doesn't erase concern over a method of lethal injection that veterinarians stopped using on animals in 2002 over similar concerns about cruelty.

We know some Virginians believe that convicted murderers don't deserve any consideration. But both the state and U.S. constitutions prohibit cruel and unusual punishment.

Something that is too cruel for a stray dog surely is too cruel for a human being, even one found guilty of a capital offense.

There is no humane way for the state to kill a human being. No matter what horrid crime a person has been convicted of, any method of execution is, by its very nature, an inhumane act.

But if Virginia insists on such inhumanity, the state should find as painless a method as possible.

The current lethal injection method fails that minimum test -- and thus stains the humanity of all Virginians.