30/04/2014 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
“After the scandal of Dennis McGuire’s prolonged death agony in Ohio on 16 January 2014, I welcomed the decision by Judge Wendell Griffin of Arkansas to suspend all executions in that state pending clarifications as to the method used. The botched execution of Clayton Lockett in dreadful torment, on 29 April 2014 in Oklahoma*, again demonstrates the cruelty and inhumanity of this penalty and the urgency of an overall moratorium,” said Marietta Karamanli (France, SOC), general rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on abolition of the death penalty.
“The Council of Europe supports universal abolition of the death penalty, a cruel and inhuman punishment. Europe is a continent without executions, with the sole, sad exception of Belarus,” the general rapporteur concluded.
*A few minutes after the lethale injection commenced, a halt to the execution was ordered because a vein had ruptured. But after 43 minutes in agony, the condemned man reportedly died of a “fatal heart attack”, visibly after atrocious suffering which was partly hidden from the spectators present by a curtain drawn for that purpose.