The Real USA - Botched executions rouse concerns of inhumane treatment

Recent botched executions by lethal injection may be playing a role in changing attitudes towards the death penalty. Charges are increasingly made that prisoners are subjected to inhumane and unconstitutional suffering when given such injections. In today’s program, we meet the director of “The last 40 miles,” a video that tells the story of a Texas prisoner’s journey to his execution. Alex Hannaford hopes more viewers will come away from the video feeling that “we execute human beings rather than monsters.” He notes that race plays a major role in the application of the death penalty in Texas, where a disproportionate number of African Americans are sentenced to death, as they are throughout the United States. He feels that the tide may be turning against the death penalty.