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How about putting him on a diet?

Bookworm on Aug 04 2008 at 2:21 pm | Filed under: Crime and punishment

A convicted murder who raped and murdered two girls in the 1980s is fighting execution on the ground that, because he is so fat, his veins are bad and it will be hard to get the right dosage for the lethal injection. He also contends that his migraine medicine will make him resistant to the injection. I have a few simple suggestions, given that this guy is in the prison system’s control:

1. Feed him less so he loses weight.

2. Stop his migraine medicine.

3. Find his big veins before the execution and place an IV needle in it ahead of time. No muss, no fuss.

Then kill the guy.

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9 Responses to “How about putting him on a diet?”

on 04 Aug 2008 at 3:34 pm 1Earl

Heartless be-otch!
on 04 Aug 2008 at 3:46 pm 2Tiresias

I don’t think he has a winning argument, here.
on 04 Aug 2008 at 4:13 pm 3Deana

That argument is ridiculous on its face and any doctor or nurse would tell you that.

It can, at times, be difficult to find a vein in obese people but nurses do it every day, thousands and thousands of times per day, in hospitals everywhere.

And if they can’t find a vein using the standard procedure then, well, “We have ways . . .” Technology is amazing and a peripherally inserted line can be put in on anyone.

What burns me is that his charge is going to cost tax payers more money when it shouldn’t be given a moment’s thought.

Deana
on 04 Aug 2008 at 4:20 pm 4BrianE

We had a similar case in Washington state, though this dealt with hanging. Mitchell Rupe murdered two women in a bank robbery in 1981 and was sentenced to death. In 1994 his execution was overturned since at 400 pounds, he argued he was too heavy to hang.
He died of liver disease in 2006.

Dorothy Payne of Olympia, Capron’s mother-in-law, called news of Rupe’s death “wonderful.”

“Nobody’s going to miss Mitchell Rupe,” she said. “He’s going to finally meet his justice.”

She said family members visit Capron’s grave in nearby Tumwater every week. Payne turns 74 on Wednesday and said news that Rupe had died was “the best birthday present anyone could ever have given me.”

“I know it sounds horrible. But if he ever once said he was sorry or if he had ever shown any remorse instead of sitting there gloating, maybe I’d feel different,” Payne said.

Attorney Roger Hunko of Port Orchard, who also represented Rupe, offered a different view.

“Mitch, when I represented him, was always a gentleman, a very intelligent man,” Hunko said. “He regretted what he did that got him in trouble.”

Rupe weighed more than 425 pounds — that’s the highest the scale went — when the federal judge ruled he was too heavy to hang, Hunko said.

But that was not his normal weight, Hunko said. Rupe’s myriad physical problems had caused fluid to build up in his body and dramatically increased his weight, the attorney said.

Doctors in Walla Walla performed emergency surgery that allowed him to shed 150 pounds of fluid within a few weeks, Hunko said. He eventually weighed about 275 pounds, 25 less than when he entered prison, Hunko said.

As a result of the Rupe case, the Legislature in 1996 changed the state’s primary method of execution from hanging to lethal injection, Hunko said.

Societies interest of justice must focus on the family of the victim. Imagine this family waited over 25 years for justice.
Notice the comment by the lawyer.
I know, I know, I shouldn’t judge all lawyers by the statements of a few.
on 04 Aug 2008 at 4:51 pm 5Ymarsakar

If he thinks his veins are too large, how about I just crush his wind pipe. That’s not too large for the right dosage, is it.

If he wants, I can even cut off his fat given a knife of the appropriate length and sharpness. And when all else fails, gravity will hang him pretty fast given his weight. Even with piano wire.

Waterboarding is the humane version of its earlier medieval version, though I don’t know what the Chinese had it originally as. The modern version seems effective enough as it is. The Spanish Inquisition, however, took a different take on waterboarding. They do the essential thing of pouring water over your face, making you believe you are being drowned, however, they added the quaint little addin of stuffing a very long cloth rag in you mouth. This way, you could only breath through your mouth and you could only do that if you kept swallowing the water. After a few of that, the rag, which is very long, is now down your throat and almost to the stomach.

The Inquisitors would then pull the rag out, when they want to start on something new.

Many things are available to solve people’s problems with the DP. Many things.

As a result of the Rupe case, the Legislature in 1996 changed the state’s primary method of execution from hanging to lethal injection, Hunko said.

No matter how you try to change the laws, what will never change is the spirit of the executioners. And there is only one spirit that exists when executing people. There are many excuses to avoid execution, but there’s one will that demands it always.

I hate the moralizing priests that believe life imprisonment is cleaner on their hands than the DP, given the DP now a days is just 25 years in prison, then you get free, stay in jail, or are executed.

Yet, just the assurance that there’s some kind of “life imprisonment without the possibility of parole” will be enough to assuage the guilty little nattering consciences of numerous individuals on this planet.

In reality, there’s not much difference. But they don’t know. So long as their hands remain clean and their consciences free at night and somebody else dying for their actions, it’s all good.
on 04 Aug 2008 at 4:57 pm 6Bookworm

My goodness, Y, that was blood thirsty. You’re right that there are other ways than those I suggested to deal with the problem of excess avoirdupois, but I doubt most people would take you up on your offers.

You do, however, highlight from the other extreme just how ridiculous this guy’s fight against his execution is.
on 05 Aug 2008 at 2:11 am 7Ymarsakar

Criminals think they are bloodthirsty and that gives them the right to try and destroy society.

What they don’t seem to understand is that the prison doesn’t just protect us from them. They protect them from us.

If they don’t like the system and want to get out, I got plenty of alternatives for them.
on 05 Aug 2008 at 2:29 am 8Ymarsakar

I’m not a kind hearted and tranquil soul like you, Book, which people may or may not have noticed.

These kinds of people with their appeals rather than protestations of innocence, are situational ethics folks. It is wrong only when their skin is being sliced off. It was good when it was other people hurting and dying under them, but now all of a sudden it’s inhumane or painful for them to die cause their veins are too large.

Many people are like you in that they will support death just to get rid of them the fastest. Most of the time I’m like that as well, simply because I believe in efficiency. However, when these people annoy me, my instincts call out for more extreme and just punishments. These people obviously do not realize how well they have it and it would benefit society at large to realize what “humane” truly means. And they will never know that until they see inhumane acts.

I wonder if they truly realize that to Jacksonians like me, their lives aren’t worth a lick of spit, for that is the value they held other’s lives when they had power over them. The Meta-Golden rule demands that I be consistent if they ever come into my power.

They are lucky America is run by lawyers, judges, and laws. Laws they break and then take advantage of. For in anarchy, it is always the strongest and the most ruthless that prevails.

I don’t like anarchy but obviously they do.
on 05 Aug 2008 at 12:46 pm 9Bill Smith

Strap him to a bed, and let him die “naturally,” by dehydration, and starvation. It’s a kind, merciful, painless death as proponents of the Terri Schiavo murder were at pains to tell us.

If society was OK with that then for her, it’s OK for this t*rd, too.

Seriously, the Russians had a humane way of dispatching officers who had to go. There’d be some big military formation, and the officer who was to be executed — but didn’t know it — would be there, too. During a speech, or piece of music, somebody would creep up behind him with a pistol, in full view of everyone — a little deterrent value there — and blow his brains out. Dead before he hit the ground.