On September 30, a Tennessee woman on death row was strapped to a gurney and given two doses of lethal drugs. She did not die. Her lawyers say she was still breathing and audibly snoring when the execution was halted, and she was rushed to a hospital in critical condition. This horrific incident is a tragic example of why no protocol, drug, or doctor can make the death penalty humane, and no courtroom can make it error-proof. A punishment that cannot be carried out humanely, and cannot be undone when it is wrong, has no place in a modern country.
Sign the petition urging Congress to abolish the federal death penalty and lead the country toward ending executions nationwide.
She was convicted of a brutal murder she committed at 18, and nothing about this case erases the pain her victim's family has endured. But what happened in that chamber shows what executions really are.
The state insists it followed every step of its official protocol, which means a flawed process worked exactly as written. Her attorneys say the IV lines were placed improperly, so the drugs entered her tissue instead of her bloodstream and left both arms severely injured. It was the second time this year Tennessee failed to complete an execution, and the governor has now halted every remaining execution in the state for the rest of the year.
The system is arbitrary in other ways too. Her teenage boyfriend, just a few months younger, took part in the same crime and was sentenced to life in prison. She was sentenced to death. Her appeals argued that the jury never fully heard about her mental illness, brain damage, and severe childhood abuse.
And the risk of getting it wrong is real. Since the 1970s, 200 people sentenced to death across 30 states have later been exonerated. That is roughly one wrongful death sentence for every eight people executed. Once an execution is carried out, there is no way to take it back.
Many countries have already abolished capital punishment, recognizing it as incompatible with modern justice systems. The death penalty is irreversible. It carries the risk of wrongful execution. And it requires the state to decide who lives and who dies. This doesn't have to happen.
Sign the petition and tell Congress to end the death penalty in America.
