“Arkansas and its governor are reaping a whirlwind of nasty publicity around the world for their haste to kill eight condemned men before the secret cache of a narcotic that will help kill them reaches its expiration date. They are to die two a day this month until the last one is dispatched to his grave.
“America will soon end its long ambivalence about executing people by stopping the killings altogether, by practice if not by statute or judicial decree. The fatuous legal and medical arguments for a decade now about which cocktail of pharmaceutical horrors might render a person’s death something short of ‘cruel’ — the constitutional standard for legally taking someone’s life — may be the death penalty’s last stand.”