17/01/2014 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Strasbourg, 17.01.2014 – Marina Schuster (Germany, ALDE), General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), expresses her outrage at the cruel and inhuman execution of Dennis McGuire in Lucasville, Ohio, by an ‘experimental’ death cocktail replacing other drugs whose manufacturers have refused to make them available for the purpose of capital punishment.
“For a quarter of an hour, Mr McGuire suffered horribly, in front of his wife and children, from pain and panic caused by drug-induced breathing distress. No execution method is ever humane, but this terribly botched state killing shows, for all to see, what a cruel and inhuman punishment the death penalty is. This punishment has no place in a civilized society. I call on the American people to protest against such atrocities being committed in their name.”