This is going to sound a bit crazy, but something I've been reading repeatedly in arguments over the lethal injection debate makes no sense to me, and I think it has more to do with the inherently incompetent nature of government than it does with the procedure, which is being described as too cruel to be used on animals:

An anesthesiologist testified Monday that Ohio's lethal injection procedure isn't appropriate for dogs or cats, let alone humans.

Dr. Mark Heath's testimony on behalf of two murder defendants came in a Lorain County hearing on the constitutionality of state's method for putting prisoners to death.

Heath, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University, says it's possible to perform lethal injection of prisoners in a humane manner, but that Ohio's method falls below the standard for euthanizing household pets.

Ohio requires its executions to be carried out "in a professional, humane, sensitive and dignified manner." The two men facing murder charges say the state's lethal injection procedure doesn't give the quick and painless deaths required by state law.

Lethal injections are on hold nationally while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge in a case from Kentucky, which is among the roughly three dozen states that administer three drugs in succession to sedate, paralyze and kill prisoners.

The major criticism of the three-drug execution procedure is that if the executioner administers too little anesthetic or makes mistakes in injecting it, the inmate could suffer excruciating pain from the other two drugs.

Difficulties with two executions in recent years, in which the execution team struggled to find suitable veins in inmates' arms, brought complaints that the method is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. Ohio officials stand by the procedure.

This is not new. I've read numerous accounts like this about botched lethal injections involving missed veins, deaths taking a half an hour or more, chemical burns, and among the cases cited by cited by Amnesty International was one in which "an autopsy found 19 puncture marks resulting from attempts to establish an IV line."

The lawyers for the prisoners are right. We wouldn't kill a dog that way.

What bothers me about this is that any doctor, nurse, veterinarian, or even veterinary assistant could do a better job than these prison guards do. Prison guards (known in bureaucratese as "execution teams") are not trained in basic medical techniques, and no amount of regulations can guarantee that a guard can obtain phlebotomist skills. They're simply told what to to in bureaucratically incomprehensible policy and procedure manuals and then they learn on the job. (Sorry, but if I were having blood drawn I wouldn't want a prison guard who does maybe one execution per year coming anywhere near me with a needle.)

Two obvious, glaring problems stand out.

First, why on earth can't these state governments hire a technician who knows how to find a vein to come in and just do it? There's no need to force a doctor to violate the Hippocratic Oath or anything; just hire someone who has worked for a blood bank or a vet. Or hell, even a former junkie. The problem (at least so it seems to me) is that the tradition has always been that prison guards carry out executions, and while any old fool can pull a switch or spring a trap, finding a vein requires skill. (And finding a vein under the formal public pressures inherent in a public execution requires more than technical skill.)

The other issue that has long bugged me about this debate is that it wouldn't even be necessary to worry about the inability to find a vein if they did what every compassionate vet does these days (and what was done to Puff when his time came).

Simply administer a sedative first.

No vein is needed. Just a simple shot anywhere in the body (the arm or the butt will do fine), and after a minute or so, the result is complete and total loss of consciousness. In the case of my dog Puff, he went peacefully, literally, to sleep, and once he was asleep, the vet found the vein, and injected the massive dose of pentabarbital (which promptly stopped his heart, killing him instantly).

What in the hell is wrong with that? Nothing could be more humane, yet it doesn't seem to have ever occurred to the bureaucrats. You'd almost think that the goal was not humanely assuring the condemned person's exit from this world, but incompetently fussing around and messing with his last few minutes in the hope that he'll die consciously or something.

Is that it? Is there a sadistic urge to make people not merely die, but die "consciously"?

I support capital punishment, but I don't see any logical or moral reason why people have to die in a conscious manner. What's the difference to society between the prisoner closing his eyes and going to sleep and getting the fatal shot later, as opposed to having to getting all set up with incompetently placed IV lines in the hope of receiving the "three ingredient" shot while he is conscious?

(Parenthetically, a prisoner first rendered unconscious by a tranquilizer could be killed in any manner at all. I suppose if the public has an emotional need for blood, he could be shot. Or even guillotined.)

This is not logical. The goal of lethal injection was supposedly to make it humane, right?

So.....

What part of the word "humane" don't they understand?

AFTERTHOUGHT: It occurs to me that maybe there's an argument here for bringing back traditional executioners -- people who specialize in killing. There's a reason why executioners are not normal people, and that's because most normal people have trouble carrying out the premeditated killing of another human being. (This might explain why trained marksmen who never miss at target practice often miss live human suspects.) It might be unreasonable to expect prison guards to just be able to strap a man down and "find a vein" in high-profile circumstances where even a trained phlebotomist might have problems. In any event, while lethal injection arises from the theory of a humane death, it has been rendered grotesque in its application (and probably cruel and unusual punishment) when there's no theoretical reason it should be.