The first use of Pentobarbital on a Texas inmate

In the commentary on the article entitled, "The first use of Pentobarbital on a Texas inmate," the author states how this drug was just recently used on an inmate named Cary Kerr who raped and killed a woman in Fort Worth, Texas. He was denied both and appeal and clemency and was sentenced to die on May 2, 2011. Kerr objected to being the so-called "guinea pig" and claims that it is unfair to be volunteered for such an experiment. The reason that the switch was made from one drug to the other was because of the lack of enough sodium lithiopental, the previous drug that had been used for executions.

I completely agree with Anabel when she says that Kerr sounds completely ridiculous when he is pleading his case saying that it isn't fair to be treated with this new drug. Well obviously, life isn't fair especially for the lady he had previously raped and killed. In my opinion, we do inmates on death row a favor by giving them lethal injection. If I were in charge, I would make it so that they would have to suffer through their execution just like their victims had to. Many of the people on death row are lucky to live as long as they do when they commit such disgusting crimes. Thank god they don't have a choice in any of this.

Texas Psychologist Punished in Death Penalty Cases

In the article, Texas Psychologist Punished in Death Penalty Case, psychologist George Denkowski is being accused of diagnosing fourteen inmates to be mentally competent enough to face the death penalty, when it is questionable whether they actually were or not. Other psychologists believed that his practice was not legitimite and also critisized it to be unscientific. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional to execute mentally impaired inmates, but they left it up to the states to define what exactly it meant. Texas created a three-part criteria in order to determine an inmates mental competence. Having the ability to intelligently function below average, lacking behavior skills, and having these problems from a young age are what determines if a convict is mentally capable to deal with the death sentence in an effective manner. Two years ago, other psychologists and defense attorneys observed and reported that Denkowski would purposely make an inmate's intelligence level seem to be higher so they would be eligible to face the dealth penalty.

In the end, Denkowski was only given a $5,000 fine and agreed to not conduct any disability evaluations in the future. Other than that, all the charges were dropped. This angers me. This man is playing with people's lives like it's not a big deal. Two of the inmates that he evaluated were given the death penalty and it will never be known if they were fully able to understand what their punishment was all about. For all we know, one of those men could have been innocent and he was scared into thinking he did something wrong, due to his incompetence. Clearly Denkowski was not in his profession for the right reasons. It said that he isn't allowed conduct these types of evaluations, but I can't help but wonder what other sorts of shady things he pulls with other non-criminalized clients.