There is no humane way to execute

Following a news item posted below concerning a failed execution in Ohio, USA:
Ohio plans execution method untried on prisoners
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio announced plans to switch from the usual three-drug cocktail used to execute inmates to a one-drug method which has never been tried on prisoners.
Under the three-drug method, the first drug makes the prisoner unconscious, the second paralyzes him and the third stops his heart — a process that death penalty opponents argue is excruciatingly painful if the first drug doesn't work.
The single-drug technique amounts to an overdose of anesthesia.
Death penalty opponents hailed the decision as making executions more humane but expressed reservations about using such an untested method. The same drug is commonly used to euthanize pets and in some parts of Europe has been used in assisted suicides.
Richard Dieter, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, noted the new practice would essentially be an experiment performed on inmates.
"They're human subjects and they're not willingly part of this," Dieter said. "This is experimenting with the unknown, and that always raises concerns."
The inmates who are going to be executed could challenge the constitutionality of what's being proposed in Ohio.

The lesson for Thailand is that there is no humane way to kill people

The Torture of Waiting for Execution

Victor Hugo in ‘The Last Day of a Condemned Man’ describes with all the passion and clarity of his art ‘the slow succession of tortures which comprise the process of execution.’ In 1829 he outlined the great misrepresentation of the process of execution which is still current today; ‘they think that the execution is only the fall of a blade, nothing before, nothing after. They do not think of the sufferings of the spirit as they vaunt the power of killing with little physical pain’, a pain deemed insignificant because it only lasts half a second.
Talking with a prisoner on death row, a few days ago, I perceived the suffering, indeed the torture, of indecision, of the long wait for either execution or some kind of reprieve. It is a torture which generates bouts of extreme depression and hopelessness, negating any purpose in life, even an indifference to a further stage in the legal process.
For six years now, no one has been executed in Thailand, although death sentences are still handed down at a rate of more than one a week. Prison officials ask the condemned why they worry, no one is actually being executed. But the threat that it may all start again at any moment is an exquisite torture, like the notorious dripping of a water tap which never ceases; already a cruel and inhumane pain.