Capital Punishment's #1 Fan Wants You to Believe Lethal Injection Controversies Are "Resolved"
One of the most vocal non-institutional proponents of capital punishment presents outdated and dishonest arguments in its defense.
The death penalty commentariat is a small world, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that some of its most prominent people would have found my relatively small footprint. Sometimes that means getting quoted by Radley Balko in an Essay of the Year contender or shouted out by Earwitness host Beth Shelburne. And sometimes it’s Dudley Sharp.
You wouldn’t be blamed for never having heard of Sharp, but he’s punched well above his weight within the death penalty debate. Per his CV, he’s given interviews to nearly every major news network, testified before five state legislatures on death penalty issues, and lectured at the State Department. Given this pedigree, I’m somewhat flattered that he engaged with my recent essay on the differences between capital punishment and assisted suicide with a “link” (the title pasted into a Twitter reply) to his own work, “Lethal Injection & Nitrogen Hypoxia: Controversies Resolved.“
Or at least I would be if it weren’t so shockingly dishonest.
A (Necessarily) Short Biography of Dudley Sharp
Sharp received a BA in philosophy from Tulane University in 1978. After a two-decade career in advocacy for criminal justice reform (summarized in two sentences on his website), he converted from death penalty opposition to zealous advocacy.
Thus ends the list of Sharp’s credentials on the “partial CV“ from his website.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing about the work in this space that requires a highfalutin education; other than my medical certifications, I only have a BA myself. Sharp, however, approaches this lack of education without a trace of epistemic humility. He’s an expert in whatever capital punishment needs him to be1, apparently including my line of work.
Sharp, who has never mixed or administered a chemical, nonetheless confidently declares that “if necessary, non medical [sic] personnel can be properly trained to mix and administer the chemicals involved in lethal injection.” The repeated IV failures that provably derail executions are, to him, identical to legitimate medicine often needing “multiple needle pricks,“ though lethal injection often and vastly exceeds the pretty common standard of three or fewer attempts for access in the field, and gross errors like puncturing someone's bladder or attempting a central line with a peripheral catheter are grounds for license revocation in “standard operating procedure.“ Sharp presumably relies on shallow analysis like this (he never discloses his methodology) to conclude that the rate of botched lethal injections is actually only 1%.
The Bulk of Sharp’s Commentary on Lethal Injection Is Outdated
Sharp’s last major update was in 2007; he inserted red-letter accusations of “ethical and factual lapses“ in January of this year but has left the piece otherwise unchanged. His main thrust falls along contemporaneous lines, arguing that sodium thiopental adequately sedates lethal injection subjects, as demonstrated by the autopsy of a single subject. He cites a letter to Lancet from anesthesiologist Mark Heath2 refuting a larger autopsy review showing frequent inadequate serum thiopental levels; Heath (correctly) argues that the larger study didn’t account for postmortem thiopental absorption into tissue. I could quibble about the significance of a single case study, but Sharp’s 2007 analysis shows uncharacteristic caution and deference to actual experts.
The bigger problem is that the pharmacokinetics of thiopental mean nothing to today’s lethal injection debate. Whatever the merits of the “classic“ cocktail (obvious signs of problems don’t meet Sharp’s selectively applied standard of proof), states abandoned it in 2011 after drugmaker Hospira stopped selling thiopental in the US. Sharp links to a discussion of Hospira’s decision but frames it merely as a rebuttal to Zivot’s “idiocy“ on the protocol-shaping topic. Given bold-text-and-bolder-language denunciations of others’ supposed ethical and factual failings, and the fact that interest in botched lethal injections hit critical mass with the 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett, it’s strange that he doesn’t seem to think readers deserve to know this.3
Sharp accuses his opponents of ignorance or dishonesty on nitrogen hypoxia, too, but he doesn’t say anything I didn’t cover elsewhere and didn’t update to include its use on Kenneth Smith. (Perhaps Alabama’s stunning mendacity proved too much even for him.)
The Beam in Dudley Sharp’s Eye
Sharp’s acknowledgment of forced protocol changes, however limited, is also useful here in that it puts his modus operandi on full display: charging opponents with an ethical lapse for anything less than pinpoint accuracy, while conveniently never mentioning context that undermines his point.
Sharp “rebuts“ an interview Zivot gave in December 2013 in part by claiming he was “unable to find“ corroboration for Zivot’s claim of propofol and midazolam shortages, circling back 10 years later to note that Zivot had not responded to requests for the same. I, however, pretty easily found Pennsylvania’s EMS authority warning about a midazolam shortage in that year, with propofol in short supply until July 2013. The US lacked sufficient midazolam for a cumulative five years (58 months for propofol) in a 14-year period from 2001 to 2014. Even if neither drug was in shortage at the exact moment, the interview speaks accurately to what was a chronic problem while states were seeking, purchasing, and using drugs in the death chamber.
In citing Heath’s Lancet letter, Sharp also fails to inform the reader that the authors confirmed four different “technical issues” with lethal injection, all of which Sharp claims are easily handled by “criminal justice professionals.” Sharp also never tells the reader that Heath testified he’d never seen a reliably humane lethal injection protocol. The involvement of Oklahoma pathologist Jay Chapman is cited to rebut the assertion that healthcare professionals were not involved in lethal injection protocol design, without mentioning that Chapman himself doubted his credentials. And while Sharp is clearly well-acquainted with Zivot’s advocacy, he offers no comment on Zivot’s 2020 pulmonary edema-based study; his “rebuttal“ of the concept of botched executions only mentions Zivot to say that his criticisms of Austin Sarat’s review—which uses a categorically different methodology—apply to Zivot and “many others.“
He’s Wrong, But He’s in Line
The most frustrating thing about Sharp isn’t that his analysis is this shallow and intellectually lazy; it’s that pro-inhumanity commentary really doesn’t get much better—and it doesn’t matter. The controlling opinion in lethal injection litigation, Glossip v. Gross, freely admits it took the word of Drugs.com and a shipping label over 14 physicians and pharmacists. When even practitioners of lethal injection question its pace, the response is that they're not “man enough” for it. The Carceral State Fan Club doesn’t want the smartest people’s best-informed opinions, it wants someone in a suit jacket (or white coat) wielding a rubber stamp. Whatever his other qualifications, Sharp will happily fit that bill.
Highlights of the “ProDPinNC“ blog include legal analysis (there has apparently never been a wrongful execution since 1915) and biblical exegesis (there is apparently “overwhelming“ support for capital punishment in the New Testament); while I find neither of these convincing, I try not to play lawyer or exegete on the Internet.
Coauthored by Donald R Stanski and Derrick J Pounder.
Update: As you’ll note in the comments below, Sharp responded that he had written on Clayton Lockett elsewhere on his site. I stand by my framing here: Sharp clearly intends “Controversies Resolved“ as a categorical rebuttal to criticisms of lethal injection, and the circumstances of the largest controversy in the history of lethal injection are conspicuous by their absence.
Regarding Kenneth Smith:
In a message dated 5/23/2024 9:04:29 AM Central Daylight Time, sharpjfa@aol.com writes:
To: Submissions, All staff at Alabama Political Reporter
Re: Full Rebuttal: Opinion | Capital Punishment: A stain on Alabama’s justice system From public hangings to the nitrogen hypoxia controversy, the state exemplifies everything wrong with capital punishment. By BILL BRITT, Alabama Political Reporter, May 21, 2024
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
1350 words, absent all fn.
Preface
Bill Britt's column is an anti-death penalty norm. He parrots anti-death penalty nonsense (1), with no fact checking, nor vetting and no use of critical thinking, while evading all pro-death penalty research. Both are common journalism practices (1,2), as Britt exemplifies.
Britt is editor-in-chief at the Alabama Political Reporter (APR) and host of The Voice of Alabama Politics and he exemplifies everything wrong with journalism.
I supplied all fact checking and sources to APR and will do the same for any readers, at sharpjfa@aol.com
===
Britt is unaware that justice is the foundation for the death penalty, as it is for all sanctions, as Britt can find with Socrates, Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, C.S. Lewis and countless others of our greatest thinkers (3), inclusive of 2,000 years of pro death penalty teachings by the greatest of Popes, Saints, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, biblical scholars and theologians (4), all and each of whom overwhelm the recent (2018), unreasoned, fact averse Catholic Church's decision to call the death penalty "inadmissible", when in fact, it is that change which is inadmissible, when reason and fact prevail (5).
Britt states:"Despite the overwhelming evidence highlighting the profound flaws and inherent injustices of capital punishment".
Following, near, normalized journalism practices (2), Britt "forgot" to fact check, vet and use critical thinking, with those bits of anti-death penalty "evidence", all rebutted, here (1).
Britt quotes "EJI founder Bryan Stevenson:“The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question is whether we deserve to kill." . . . a standard, unreasoned anti-death penalty bit of nonsense (1,2).
We define justice, within criminal justice, based upon sanctions which are just and deserved, those being a sanction not too lenient and not too harsh, based upon the circumstances of the crimes.
Britt and Stevenson have no clue that "the real, true and most important question is whether rape and murder victims (and all others) will get the justice they deserve?", and, if relying upon Stevenson's comment and Britt's column, they, completely, disagree with that, another, very sad, anti-death penalty norm (6).
I agree with Britt that "The most glaring issue with the death penalty is its irreversible nature."
As Britt only parrots anti-death penalty nonsense, he is unaware that the death penalty/executions helps to protect and save innocents, in four ways, better than does a life sentence: enhanced due process, enhanced incapacitation, enhanced probability and enhanced deterrence (7,8), with the first three unchallenged, with enhanced deterrence being challenged, but prevailing by fact and reason (7, 8).
Britt is clueless, as he confesses, unaware that there have been, at least, 24 US based studies finding for death penalty deterrence, since 1996 (7,8), which are more credible than their critics, with this confirmation:
Nobel Prize Laureate (Economics) Gary Becker: “the evidence of a variety of types — not simply the quantitative evidence — has been enough to convince me that capital punishment does deter and is worth using for the worst sorts of offenses.” (NY Times, 11/18/07)
"(Becker) is the most important social scientist in the past 50 years (NY Times, 5/5/14) (7,8).
Britt is unaware that murder rates, between states is not the way to measure deterrence, as has been known since . . . reason (7,8).
For example, if Iceland and its capital Reykjavik have the lowest crime and murder rates in the world, does that mean that laws, law enforcement and sanction deter none in every other city and country because all have higher rates of crime? Of course not. That would be ludicrous.
Britt is unaware, because, instead of thinking, he parrots anti-death penalty nonsense (1,7,8), as here:
It is, another, anti-death penalty norm to lie about the "innocent"/"exonerated" from death row, as has been known, since 1998 (13). Today, that fraud rate is 71-83%, depending upon study. After 50 years of the most intense scrutiny (1973-2024), we have a 99.6% rate of accuracy in guilty findings, with the 0.4% factually innocent being released (13), very likely, the most accurate of all sanctions.
Britt quotes Helen Prejean: “The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it.”
Both Prejean (6,9) and Britt are unaware that the death penalty/execution is, only, used as a just and appropriate sanction for some of our worst crimes. It is the solution to the most just sanction, with some crimes, within criminal justice, as with all other sanctions for all other crimes. Britt and Prejean clueless (6,9).
Britt quotes: Albert Camus: “But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared?”
Incredibly stupid, but Britt cannot see it, as he is blind to anti-death penalty nonsense.
The premeditation for execution, as for all sanctions, is known as the due process of law, which is the investigation, the indictment, all pre-trial motions, trial, appeals and the executive branch consideration of pardon or commutation (10).
Britt and Camus seem to think it best that we abandon all that premeditation (10): "normal" anti-death penalty non thinking.
Camus is, also, unaware of the moral and legal distinctions between execution and murders, meaning that he, also, equates kidnapping and incarceration, fines and theft, community service and slavery, as well as equating guilty murderers with their innocent victims, all common anti-death penalty standards, (6) as with Britt: "By executing those who commit heinous acts, the state mirrors the very brutality it seeks to condemn." How and why? Here is the answer (6).
Grotesquely, both Prejean and Camus find that the just execution of guilty murderers is much worse than the unjust rape and murder of innocent children (6,9).
contd
Audience:
AB writes:
1) " . . . the fact that interest in botched lethal injections hit critical mass with the 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett, it’s strange that he doesn’t seem to think readers deserve to know this."
AB refuses to fact check. All he had to do was enter "Clayton Lockett" In my blog search engine, which "voila":
Clayton Lockett: The Case for Execution
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2014/06/clayton-lockett-case-for-execution.html
2) "Heath testified he’d never seen a reliably humane lethal injection protocol."
It was a ridiculous comment. There would be no reason to respond to it. Anyone knowing the overdosing properties of the drugs, individually and collectively, used would know that.