US lawmakers say they won't abandon death penalty

A bungled execution in Oklahoma in which the condemned prisoner writhed and moaned as he received a lethal injection outraged death-penalty opponents, invited court challenges and attracted worldwide attention.
But the inmate's agony alone is highly unlikely to change minds about capital punishment in the most active US death-penalty states, where lawmakers say there is little political will to move against lethal injections, and a single execution gone wrong won't change that.
Oklahoma Rep Mike Christian, a Republican lawmaker who pushed to have state Supreme Court justices impeached for briefly halting Tuesday's execution, was unsparing.
"I realize this may sound harsh," Christian said, "but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."

Attorneys for death-row inmates hope Tuesday's spectacle provides new evidence to argue that the injections are inhumane and illegal. But beyond the courtroom, support for capital punishment is undeterred in the states that perform the greatest number of executions, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia and Ohio. And nowhere in those places are any elected officials of either political party talking seriously about using the incident to seek an end to executions.
Missouri Rep Paul Fitzwater, a Republican who chairs the state House's corrections committee, called the botched execution "horrible" and "definitely not humane" but said it had not sparked any calls for reform.

Oklahoma prison officials say Tuesday's execution of Clayton Lockett went awry when an intravenous line of deadly drugs became dislodged. He later died from an apparent heart attack. Lockett had been condemned for shooting a 19-year-old girl with a sawed-off shotgun and watching as two accomplices buried her alive.

Oklahoma Gov Mary Fallin has stayed an upcoming execution as prison officials investigate, but she too reaffirmed her support for capital punishment.
President Barack Obama yesterday said the Oklahoma event highlighted problems with the death penalty and he's asking his attorney general for a review.
Surveys by Gallup indicate that support for the death penalty remains strong in the United States, though it has declined over the last 20 years, from 80 per cent in favor of capital punishment in 1992 to 60 per cent two years ago.

There are signs of a shift, primarily in the West and Northeast, after almost four decades in which no state legislatures voted to end executions.