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The culture war about euthanasia in Canada has been roaring a bit, almost a decade after they began implementing the program. However, I'm not particularly interested in the current Canadian culture war on this topic; instead, I'm curious about a related topic in the US culture war.
I saw this chart being bandied about, describing the procedure. I hadn't really thought about how the procedure actually works. It seems that you can either choose a route like this, where a series of chemicals are injected by a doctor, or a route where you self-administer some oral drugs. My first thought for this route was, "That sounds a lot like what they use in the US for capital punishment." My Duck-Duck-fu quickly hit my lack of knowledge of pharmacology as I was trying to figure out if they were actually the same drugs or not. It seems like they're at least quite similar. From here, they list midazolam, propofol, and rocuronium as being used in MAID. Some examples from my searching includes things from Wikipedia like, for midazolam:
For propofol:
For rocuronium, I can't even figure out if it's the same thing as rocuronium bromide or if they're different, but while Wikipedia doesn't have an article for the former, it has for the latter:
I followed the litigation in the US some years back around the death penalty, and I was aware that there was a concerted effort to pressure drug manufacturers to stop selling whatever drugs were used to states who would use them for executions. I also remember many of the arguments being that such injections constituted cruel and unusual treatment, particularly focusing on the X% or whatever risk that something went wrong or something didn't work quite right for this person or that person. (As an aside, literally none of the Canadian websites I've seen on MAID say a single word about any risk of things not going swimmingly.)
My question is if anyone is familiar with more recent developments in the US. Have there been any reasonably big cases that are more recent (than probably 5-10yrs ago)? In any of those cases, was a US state able to successfully point to Canada's program in order to argue that the risk was low and that it should not constitute cruel/unusual punishment? Are there actual meaningful differences in the drugs used that have been argued in court? (Are those differences due to the pressure on drug manufacturers?) Have the anti-death penalty advocates just given up on that argument and focused their efforts more on pressuring the manufacturers? Basically, if we were to draw a "territory control map" for the US litigation/culture war, what does the current state look like?
In all cases where the combination of drugs is being argued, it's a purely bad faith argument from people that are against all executions. There is no combination of drugs that can be used which will satisfy people who are against the death penalty, because they're against the death penalty. The only reason to argue about the drugs is to create an additional legal obstacle, tie executions up in courts longer, and cost the state more money. Any strategy for addressing these arguments has to start with the knowledge that the opponents doesn't actually care whether the drugs used are particularly cruel and unusual.
I believe you are overlooking the category of bad-faith arguments which don't care about all executions--just their own. Defense lawyers are obligated to try any and every strategy, and cruel/unusual defenses are still considered. This probably has something to do with decades of highly visible failures across methods.
Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't really matter whether those opponents actually care, only what the judge and jury think. Pointing to Canada's program won't convince death row inmates to lie down and take it, but it may satisfy the letter of the law.
Good point regarding defense lawyers.
Regarding the convincing of judges, I simply don't believe that they're actually making a good faith consideration of the merits either. Some judges are in favor of the death penalty, some are against, and they will rule accordingly to the extent that they can get away with it. There is still value in making convincing argument to the extent that it permits a judge to go in the direction they'd prefer, but I would be absolutely shocked to find that death penalties are administered or not based on judges that genuinely don't know which way they'd like to rule prior to hearing the facts. Of course, this isn't just a death penalty thing - listening to just about any of the Supreme Court hearings leaves me rolling my eyes at the justices plainly looking for excuses to side with their preferred side.
Judge Posner Richard, known for his work on economic theory of law, admitted as much:
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