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"I taste it in my throat" said of lethal injection

Captain.Heroin

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-young-lethal-injection-texas-execution-today-2018-07-17/

HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A Texas prisoner was executed Tuesday evening for the fatal shooting of a San Antonio convenience store owner after courts turned down appeals that the state parole board improperly rejected the inmate's clemency request because he's black.

Christopher Young, 34, never denied the slaying, which was recorded on a store surveillance camera, but insisted he was drunk and didn't intend to kill 53-year-old Hasmukh "Hash" Patel during an attempted robbery after drinking nearly two dozen beers and then doing cocaine that Sunday morning, Nov. 21, 2004.

Young and Patel knew each other, and Patel's family members had been vocal about not wanting Young put to death.

In his final statement from the death chamber, Young said he loved his victim's family "like they love me."

"Make sure the kids in the world know I'm being executed and those kids I've been mentoring keep this fight going," he said.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he cursed twice and said the drug burned his throat.

"I taste it in my throat," he said.

Then he slipped into unconsciousness, saying something incomprehensible. He started taking shallow breaths. Within about 30 seconds, he stopped moving and was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m. CDT.

Twenty-five minutes had passed since he was first given the lethal dose.

Young became the eighth prisoner put to death this year in Texas, one more than all of 2017 in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

His attorneys sued the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles after the panel last week rejected a clemency plea in which the lawyers argued Young was "no longer the young man he was when he arrived" on death row, that he was "truly remorseful" and that Patel's son was against the execution.

In their federal civil rights lawsuit, Young's lawyers argued that a white Texas inmate, Thomas Whitaker, received a rare commutation earlier this year as his execution was imminent for the slaying of his mother and brother. Young is black and race improperly "appears to be the driving force in this case," attorney David Dow said in the appeal that sought to delay the punishment.

A federal judge in Houston dismissed the suit and refused to stop the execution, then hours later Tuesday the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down an appeal of that ruling. Young's attorneys did not take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Stephen Hoffman, an assistant Texas attorney general, said the lawsuit was a delay tactic, improper, speculative and "legally and factually deficient."

Young and his lawyers argued he no longer was a Bloods street gang member, had matured in prison and hoped to show others "look where you can end up."

"I didn't know about death row," Young told The Associated Press recently from prison. "It needs to be talked about. You've got a whole new generation. You've got to stop this, not just executions but the crimes. Nobody's talking to these kids. I can't bring Hash back but I can do something to make sure there's no more Hashes."

He said he excelled at chess and violin, cello and bass but "all that stopped" and he joined the Bloods when he was about 8 after his father was shot and killed in a robbery.

According to court documents, Young sexually assaulted a woman in her apartment with her three young children present, then forced her to drive off with him in her car. She managed to escape, and records show he drove one block to the Mini Food Mart where owner Patel was shot. Young was arrested 90 minutes later after picking up a prostitute and driving to a crack house where the stolen car was parked outside and spotted by San Antonio police.

Young told the AP the shooting stemmed from a dispute he believed involved the mother of one of his three children and the store owner. He said the woman, however, lied to him.

"He was not a bad dude at all," Young said of Patel. "I was drunk. We knew the victim. The whole confrontation went wrong. I thought he was reaching for a gun and I shot."

Patel's family members declined to witness the execution of Young. In a statement, they said Young forever changed their lives but that when they reflect on "what Hasmukh stood for, and the values that he instilled in his family, we can look for the good in people, including looking at the good in Christopher Young."

They added that their pleas for clemency for Young "sadly" were denied.

At least seven other Texas inmates have execution dates in the coming months.

When I read the headline it made me think of shooting methamphetamine.

Do barbs have a "taste" when shot? Can someone educate me? I have never had the pleasure.
 
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-young-lethal-injection-texas-execution-today-2018-07-17/



When I read the headline it made me think of shooting methamphetamine.

Do barbs have a "taste" when shot? Can someone educate me? I have never had the pleasure.

Find some and shoot a small dose of them? I have never IV'd or shot anything and never will; but friends of mine who did inject drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroin said how for them they could taste the drug after shooting it.
 
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Shooting them is a bad idea too. The sodium salts are those used for IV, as the free barbituric acids are insoluble in water. They are dangerous if injected not just for their being potent depressants, but they are highly alkaline as the salts, and doubtless absolute hell on veins, because if even a small amount ends up going into tissue as a miss, then they can cause deep burns and tissue necrosis.

Orally, taste is just bitter. Perhaps a little astringent (going from barbital, although as the free acid, I never converted mine to the sodium salt) and going from phenobarb sodium. They don't taste of anything specific, just what you'd expect from a generic drug taste of most nitrogenous compounds, bitterness, as well as a trace of astringency.

But IV, that sounds pretty shitty even if one is going to remain alive after, because of the PH, just not meant to go into people's veins. I doubt very much that it would be a good idea plugging them either, if they can cause such tissue damage, same goes for insufflation. So I'm not surprised it burnt. I've felt burning after IV shots of other drugs that were slightly off, although too acidic in my case, such as after adding a tiny bit too much citric or hydrochloric acid to a freebase in order to render it water-soluble. Even citric acid, and not much of it, after shooting H into a foot vein, I could feel it spreading up my leg as if it were dry ice, stinging like fury until diluted by blood flow. Same happened once with dipropionylmorphine, it had come up alright on PH paper, but the papers hadn't been stored in the most ideal place, and the quantity of liquid was too small to use my digital meter, not that I'd want to be dipping my PH test pen into anything I intended to consume, since its usual use is testing the PH of things certainly not intended ever to go into a human body, and over the years there has been all kinds of nasty tested with it (actually I'm on my second, I accidentally melted the first one into a blob of plastic goo and corroded glass)

The PH papers were used to test some of a broad-spectrum alkaloid isolate from opium poppy pods and straw that had been cleaned up and acylated with propionyl chloride, but had come from a cupboard with all manner of acidic bits and pieces in there. Must have been traces of acid left behind, as it even tasted somewhat sour on the tip of my tongue, and it burnt like all fucking hell moments after it had gone in.
 
Why cant they put them under surgical level anesthesia. Like the level where youd do open heart surgery. Then give them a fatal overdose of something. Just giving them a fatal dose of barbiturates seems lazy and crude
 
Shooting them is a bad idea too. The sodium salts are those used for IV, as the free barbituric acids are insoluble in water. They are dangerous if injected not just for their being potent depressants, but they are highly alkaline as the salts, and doubtless absolute hell on veins, because if even a small amount ends up going into tissue as a miss, then they can cause deep burns and tissue necrosis.

Orally, taste is just bitter. Perhaps a little astringent (going from barbital, although as the free acid, I never converted mine to the sodium salt) and going from phenobarb sodium. They don't taste of anything specific, just what you'd expect from a generic drug taste of most nitrogenous compounds, bitterness, as well as a trace of astringency.

But IV, that sounds pretty shitty even if one is going to remain alive after, because of the PH, just not meant to go into people's veins. I doubt very much that it would be a good idea plugging them either, if they can cause such tissue damage, same goes for insufflation. So I'm not surprised it burnt. I've felt burning after IV shots of other drugs that were slightly off, although too acidic in my case, such as after adding a tiny bit too much citric or hydrochloric acid to a freebase in order to render it water-soluble. Even citric acid, and not much of it, after shooting H into a foot vein, I could feel it spreading up my leg as if it were dry ice, stinging like fury until diluted by blood flow. Same happened once with dipropionylmorphine, it had come up alright on PH paper, but the papers hadn't been stored in the most ideal place, and the quantity of liquid was too small to use my digital meter, not that I'd want to be dipping my PH test pen into anything I intended to consume, since its usual use is testing the PH of things certainly not intended ever to go into a human body, and over the years there has been all kinds of nasty tested with it (actually I'm on my second, I accidentally melted the first one into a blob of plastic goo and corroded glass)

The PH papers were used to test some of a broad-spectrum alkaloid isolate from opium poppy pods and straw that had been cleaned up and acylated with propionyl chloride, but had come from a cupboard with all manner of acidic bits and pieces in there. Must have been traces of acid left behind, as it even tasted somewhat sour on the tip of my tongue, and it burnt like all fucking hell moments after it had gone in.

Yeah but the idea is the ampule of the drug will be pH balanced, etc.

Why don't they just have the inmates drink a solution with a super high dosage of pentobarbital?

Why cant they put them under surgical level anesthesia. Like the level where youd do open heart surgery. Then give them a fatal overdose of something. Just giving them a fatal dose of barbiturates seems lazy and crude

Disagree. Overdose of IV/oral pentobarbital is a standard euthanasia protocol.
 
Actually if its still used to put people in medical comas i guess its ok. I guess my main thing is i think the death is from stopping breathing. So if they are in a coma or anesthetic state deep enough to not feel dying from not breathing i have no issue.
 
Why cant they put them under surgical level anesthesia. Like the level where youd do open heart surgery. Then give them a fatal overdose of something. Just giving them a fatal dose of barbiturates seems lazy and crude

Aren't barbiturates basically tranquilizers? Seems humane to me.
 
thats funny because there are 90 at my disposal every month, thanks to a cat

Phenobarbital is still prescribed somewhat frequently for people and pets, but there are only a handful of people with sleep disorders bad enough to be prescribed small amounts of seconal which I believe they have to fill weekly. Pentobarbital is still used by vets for euthanasia but I don't believe it's ever used on an outpatient basis anymore.

I'm against capital punishment for more than one reason. I have to say though, barbitutate overdose sounds like the nicest possible way to die for anyone. I plan on going out that way if it's an option at the end of my life.
 
I don't really know why people feel so bad about someone who killed someone else brutally experiencing some pain himself in dying.

Being shot to death is MUCH more inhumane than a drug overdose, so why does someone who does that deserve a more "humane" death??

I mean I go back and forth on the death penalty.

At times I've thought it's wrong, but why should someone who kills an innocent person have the right to live?

I would assume this guy he shot to death experienced a lot more pain than this guy did just dying from an induced drug overdose.

Depending on who the person is and what they have done, if they have caused immense pain and suffering, then I don't feel about them suffering a painful death as well.

What if somehow we found someone who was a serial killer or intended to be a suicide bomber or something like that?

You guys against the death penalty would feel it's wrong to kill a serial murderer or serial rapist??

So instead we should pay for them to live in prison??

I mean in some ways prison could be a worse penalty, but if you do horrible things to people, something horrible needs to happen to you, whether it's the death penalty or at least rotting in a small cell for the rest of your life.

I don't feel sorry for murderers.
 
^It costs millions more to execute somebody than imprison them for life. It has been shown not to deter capital crimes at all. So even without ethical or constitutional considerations what is the point? Stupid waste of money on that when our schools suck and our healthcare is unaffordable.
 
^It costs millions more to execute somebody than imprison them for life. It has been shown not to deter capital crimes at all. So even without ethical or constitutional considerations what is the point? Stupid waste of money on that when our schools suck and our healthcare is unaffordable.

Ok I didn't know it costs more to execute someone then imprison them. I agree on the necessity of more money for education and health care.

I mean I've never been sure if I was for or against the death penalty, but I certainly don't feel sorry for serial killers and rapists being executed either, or care whether or not they suffer.
 
I know that with horses you ALWAYS sedate before administration of pentobarbital. If not, they spasm uncontrollably and it is extremely painful. Why do we not follow that same procedure with humans?
 
I know that with horses you ALWAYS sedate before administration of pentobarbital. If not, they spasm uncontrollably and it is extremely painful. Why do we not follow that same procedure with humans?

I am under the impression this does not happen. Interesting observation, and I hope to get some follow up responses from someone else more knowledgeable.
 
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