Too fat to die?

furiousBlog

Aug 5: Too fat to die?

I've been reading a lot about the death penalty recently. I came across this (morbidly) humorous little article:

Ohio: Too Fat for the Death Penalty?
A death row inmate scheduled for execution says he is too fat to be put to death, arguing that executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs. Lawyers for the inmate, Richard Wade Cooey II, claim in a federal lawsuit that Mr. Cooey, who weighs 267 pounds, had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court, also says that prison officials have had difficulty drawing blood from Mr. Cooey for medical procedures. Mr. Cooey, 41, was sentenced to die for raping and killing two young women in 1986. His execution is scheduled for Oct. 14.


If this works, expect to see the death row currency switch from smokes to sloppy joes.
Posted by ben in Government and Politics on 08/05/08 08:50 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I think this "too fat to kill me" thing was tried once before a couple of years back. If I remember correctly, there is (was) a state where the default means of execution was hanging. The condemned could choose lethal injection if they wanted (and all did, I think). This one guy said that having to choose his method of death was, legally, not cool ("cruel and unusual" might have been his argument), but that he was too fat to be hanged. I don't remember how it played out, but I'm fairly sure he met his end, one way or another, by the state's hand.
#1 _ary on 2008-08-05 18:32 (Reply)

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
BBCode format allowed
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.
 
 

What I'm Doing (twitter)


    Follow me on Twitter or via RSS

    Categories


    All categories

    Archives

    Syndicate This Blog

    Quicksearch