Boston Globe editorial on recent PLoS study on lethal injection: The Boston Globe has this editorial, entitled "Lethal injection, revealed."

Excerpt:
Though nearly all industrial democracies have abolished the death penalty, it survives in the United States, in part because the states where it is legal have sought to make it antiseptic. The era of public hangings is long over, replaced in America by an impersonal, well-guarded process that minimizes discomfort for the executioners and the public. But this decades-long effort to make executions seem merely clinical -- culminating in the rise of lethal injection as the dominant method of execution -- does not mean that prisoners are being put to death in a humane manner.

Indeed, a new analysis of executions in California and North Carolina suggests the opposite. Published in PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal from the Public Library of Science, it indicates that the three-drug combination generally used in lethal injections can result in a painful process of asphyxiation, during which a prisoner may be conscious. That possibility is heightened when technicians bungle the procedure. The study strips away the medical veneer and offers strong evidence that lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. ...

(Earlier coverage here and here.)