New Leathal Injection Procedure

Although it is nice to hear that the government is doing at least one of the few things they should be doing - protecting Americans by executing a murderer - I have to say that I was a little bewildered by a headline in The Cincinnati Post that read " New lethal injection protocol."

The story reports that:

Ohio today executed the first person using new injection guidelines adopted after the last execution was plagued with problems.

The veins of Rocky Barton, who shot his wife to death because she wanted to leave him, were closely examined several times before he died at 10:27 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The state's lethal injection protocol was changed after Joseph Clark's execution in May, which was held up 90 minutes when prison staff struggled to find a viable vein and one they used collapsed.

It's nice to know that government bureaucrats have made a new "nicer" protocol for killing murderers, Heaven forbid any other brutal killers have a 90 minute delay in their painless deaths. I want to know what happened to the electric chair and the gallows? Is death by hanging really too gruesome for someone who shot his wife twice with a shot gun while his 17-year-old step-daughter watched?

The news story provides a description of the crime committed by the recipient of this new, painless protocol:

Barton was convicted of aggravated murder for shooting Kimbirli Jo Barton, 44, up close with a shotgun in 2003 outside their farmhouse while his 17-year-old stepdaughter watched. She had returned to get some belongings from the home in Waynesville in Warren County...

When she arrived, Barton ran toward her and first shot her in shoulder. She tried to crawl toward her daughter, but he shot her again in the back.

Personally, I find that no death would be too horrendous for this, and many other murderers. The most selfish thing a human being can do is to take another person's life. Instead of making sure that no criminal ever has to feel stress or pain during their executions, maybe the government should be preventing crime with more police, better technology, and, most importantly, tougher laws with harsher punishments.