It was a gruesome start to the year for prison officials in Ohio this week, where a condemned killer took 20 minutes to die in a state execution that didn't go as planned.
Dennis McGuire gasped and snorted as he was put to death with an untried combination of drugs. Prison officials resorted to the mix after manufacturers refused to supply the 'traditional' cocktail for lethal injections.
Lawyers for McGuire tried to stop the execution, arguing the untried combination amounted to experimentation that could well result in terror and pain before the condemned man died.
Their fears, it seems, were well founded. The horrific nature of the latest execution in the US only serves to highlight the continued stain capital punishment is on what is supposed to be one of the world's more enlightened legal systems.
Abolishing the death penalty (already done in Canada) is a cause championed by groups ranging from Amnesty International to the United Nations.
Statistics show the death penalty does not deter murder, and that it is disproportionately meted out to offenders who are poor or members of racial minorities.
The possibility of executing the wrong man remains very real, judging by the ever-growing list of overturned wrongful convictions.
Despite all of that, capital punishment is still legal in 32 states.
That this old-world practice continues says as much about the savagery of those who make and uphold the laws as it does about those condemned to die on a prison gurney.
