Note: The following was published in the Editorial section of the Roanoke Times on April 19, 2016.

The current debate over the death penalty in Virginia reads like a dark, twisted version of the party game “Would You Rather?”
When the House of Delegates and Senate convene Wednesday, they will consider amendments the governor has suggested to House Bill 815. That bill, as originally proposed by Del. Jackson Miller (R-Manassas) would have made Virginia one of only two states in the country to revert to using the electric chair automatically if for any reason it can’t carry out a scheduled execution by lethal injection. Right now, the electric chair can be used only if the prisoner requests it.
Legislators have been told they have but two options regarding the future of capital punishment: let the Department of Corrections concoct secret execution drugs or stop killing monstrous criminals.
To his credit, the Governor is against a return to the electric chair – a ghastly, antiquated tool of torture and death. The alternative he offered, secret acquisition and administration of secretly concocted drugs, however, is not the “reasonable” compromise he says it is and should be rejected.
The problem is the drugs for lethal injection – which polls show the majority of Americans consider to be far more humane than the electric chair – are getting more and more difficult to acquire. Why? Because pharmaceutical companies that make them do not want them used in executions.
Virginia was able to carry out its last execution in October only by buying drugs from Texas, which shielded the identity of its own source. The last of that batch in the state’s possession expired last week.
The governor’s answer? Allow the state to contract with compounding pharmacies – which normally mix drugs to meet the needs of specific patients under prescription – to concoct new drugs in secret. Under the amendments offered to HB 815, neither the identity of the pharmacy nor specifics of the drugs themselves could be disclosed to the public via the Virginia Freedom of Information Act or even in a civil lawsuit.
The ACLU of Virginia rejects this plan on its face, and not just because we support repeal of the death penalty. If the state is going to engage in the process of terminating someone’s life for any reason, no matter how reprehensible the crime that person has been convicted of committing, the public must have full knowledge and understanding of the process.
Under the amendments to HB 815, neither the public, the press, nor the legislature – not even the person to be executed – would ever know what lethal drugs were used or who was responsible for making them.
The process being urged on the legislature would put the Department of Corrections in the position of engaging in an unregulated, secret drug experiment with human beings as the subjects. Those implementing the death penalty would be authorized to inject new, unapproved, never-before-used, undisclosed drugs into the veins of a living person with the intent to kill.
Experimentation with lethal drugs in executions in other states hasn’t gone so well. Take, for instance, the disturbing 2014 case of Joseph Wood in Arizona, who was injected 15 times with experimental drugs over two hours before he finally expired. As he lay “gasping and gulping,” according to the Guardian, executioners just kept pumping more and more chemicals into his arm.
Make no mistake, the “would you rather?” choice being served up to the legislature today is not a choice between the gruesome electric chair and a more humane but secretive method of execution.
There is nothing humane about experimenting on people with undisclosed drugs against their will.
Moreover, there is no urgency to choose today between two disturbing outcomes. The seven people on death row aren’t going anywhere and the two closest to being executed have both received stays as they await possible hearings by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The legislature should reject the governor’s amendments and embark on a long overdue discussion of whether Virginia should join the 18 states that have made the ultimate humane choice to discontinue the death penalty entirely.
Everyone knows no one wins a game of “would you rather?”, let alone one in which the stakes are so high.
Let’s hope the legislature tells the governor they’d rather not play at all.