Sergio D'Elia, Hands Off Cain Secretary

HANDS OFF CAIN: MYTH SURROUNDING HUMANENESS OF LETHAL INJECTION CRACKING, SERGIO D’ELIA

June 12, 2006: following the US Supreme Court’s decision to allow inmates to challenge lethal injection, Secretary of Hands Off Cain, Sergio D’Elia, declared:
“Once again, following the abolition of the death penalty for those with mental retardation, for minors and the yearly decrease in executions, we hear news from the United States going in opposite directions to the death penalty.
Lethal injection, the so called gentle way of sending to another world a person convicted of a serious crime, is the last resort in the American capital system.  
We are slowly approaching the final act in the process of abolishing the death penalty in the United States: a ruling declaring as unconstitutional execution by lethal injection due to its ‘cruel and unusual’ nature.
States which in recent years have decided to abandon death by electrocution, by hanging or by firing squad in favour of lethal injection, justified their change as a more civil, humane and painless way of putting to death those condemned to die.
The truth is different and now even the US Supreme Court is starting to take note.
Now we await the ruling to the challenges made by those condemned to death, however, with the Supreme Court’s decision to accept these appeals, cracks are already starting to show in the myth surrounding the humaneness of lethal injection”. (Sources: HOC, 12/06/2006)