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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?
I can't speak to your other questions but I would be fairly surprised if this argument were persuasive in a US court. Primarily because it's not clear what relationship Canadian legislative decisions have to American constitutional interpretation. Is the argument supposed to be that any method of execution Canada legalizes for voluntary euthanasia cannot be "cruel and unusual" within the meaning of the 8th amendment? What if Canada specifically legalizes a method because of its cruel-and-unusual-ness? Perhaps as a deterrent to people seeking it.
More generally I think the conclusion of your argument (death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the 8th amendment) and the method of argumentation (based on a contemporary understanding of the term "cruel and unusual") are misaligned with the way these two features often are in American jurisprudence today.
My impression is that judges who would agree with your conclusion tend to be constitutional originalists. They are committed to the proposition that the term "cruel and unusual" in the constitution means the same thing now that it did when the constitution was adopted. Since punishments like hanging or firing squad were permissible then, it's hard to see how "drug cocktail that puts you to sleep then stops your heart" is "cruel and unusual" by comparison. This group perhaps likes your conclusion but is opposed to your method of analysis. Since the words "cruel and unusual" in the constitution have meant the same thing since the founding subsequent developments of Canadian law are of no relevance.
By contrast I think those more amenable to your methods (the use of contemporary understandings of constitutional terms) tend to be opposed to the death penalty in toto. For them it's not a question of what method is used for execution, the whole enterprise of putting people to death as punishment for a crime is unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual". If their arguments are method-agnostic then trying to argue that a particular method is not cruel and unusual is going to be fruitless.
This seems like it's pairing originalism with a decidedly modern manner of comparison. It seems quite plausible to me that someone from 200 or 300 years ago could find firing squads, hangings and even beheadings normal but at the same time find the way in which the administration of a lethal injection (performed, from what I have seen, by medical professionals who engage in all the ceremonium that is usually part of their job, carefully sterilising needles and all) perverts the life-giving medical process to kill rather than cure (in an apparently non-violent and thereby all the more insidious way) to be unusual and revulsive and therefore cruel by virtue of the shame being killed in such a fashion ought to bring upon everyone involved.
My understanding is that arguments along the lines you describe in your comment have been advanced (unsuccessfully) before the Supreme Court before. Some states have passed laws reintroducing execution by firing squad due to issues with accessing lethal injection drugs and out of a more general concern about the unavailability of lethal injection as a method of execution.
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