Reprieve, a non-profit organization, analyzed the more than 1,400 lethal injections carried out in the United States since 1977, and in their analysis discovered that botched executions are racially biased. According to the study, the research shows that the disparities present in the criminal justice system extend to the execution of incarcerated people.
As NPR reported, the pattern is worse in Southern states. In Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia, 75% of botched executions involved Black people, even though Black people only accounted for 33% of executions in those states. Somewhat complicating things, there is no set standard for what makes an execution a botched execution. Reprieve designated executions that featured expressions of pain, an incarcerated person being conscious after a drug (or drugs in some cases) were administered, and whether execution workers struggled to find a person’s veins to administer the drugs as botched executions.
The analysis also found that it did not matter which drugs were used in a cocktail; the result, as far as a botched execution is concerned, remained the same. Reprieve’s Executive Director, Maya Foa, told NPR that tinkering with the formulas is not addressing the problem.
“There are botched executions, many of them, regardless of the drug, regardless of the cocktail. Continuing to tinker with the machinery of death is not making this better,” Foa said. “The analysis shows not only are we botching these executions and causing people torture more often than with many other methods.”
