The Idaho Department of Correction in the capital Boise announced this on Wednesday (local time). “Some are calling today’s events a failure, but the opposite is true,” agency director Josh Tewalt wrote in the statement.
“The process to prevent failure worked, and I think that’s an important differentiation,” Tewalt continued. The person sentenced to death was a 73-year-old serial killer, reported the US broadcaster ABC.
Also on Wednesday, according to media reports, a criminal was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas. The 50-year-old was sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder of his cousin and his fiancé, but maintained his innocence until the end, as the US broadcaster CNN reported.
“Agonizing Death”: The Nitrogen Method
Executions of criminals sentenced to death in the USA always cause a stir. In January, a death row inmate was executed for the first time using a new nitrogen method. During the procedure, nitrogen is supplied through a face mask, resulting in death from lack of oxygen. Human rights experts denounced this as cruel because the method was untested and might result in a painful death.
Last year, 24 death sentences were carried out in the USA. More than 2,300 death row criminals are currently on death row, some of them for decades.
