Strange Logic of Capital Punishment

Supreme Court cases have ruled that it is unconstitutional–cruel and unusual punishment–to execute a mentally retarded or insane or mentally incompetent person. The reasoning for these prohibitions is a bit vague, but the idea is that the state may no kill someone who is unable to appreciate the punishment being carried out.

Given this it is really seems to make no sense that the state could ever carry out an execution, since the death is not instantaneous. For example, if a criminal is lethally injected, no doubt it takes several minutes, or many seconds, for him to die. At first he is unconscious; then when some amount of poison has been administered, he is no doubt injured to a certain point where he is equivalent to a retarded or incompetent person. If the injection were to stop at that point, where the criminal was allowed to survive but he would have suffered brain damage so that he is incompetent, it would presumably be unconstitutional to resume the execution at a later point, since it would be execution of an incompetent. Why then can the execution proceed if there is not a break?

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9:58 am on July 14, 2004