Un supplice imperceptible. Prouver la douleur ressentie par les condamnés à mort dans les procès de l’injection létale aux États-Unis
Drawing on fieldwork combining interviews and analysis of court documents, this article studies the “evidentiary work” carried out by attorneys and experts involved in the current litigation over judicial executions by lethal injection in the USA. This execution method is supposed to kill the condem...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
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ENS Éditions
2025-05-01
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| Series: | Tracés |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/traces/16424 |
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| Summary: | Drawing on fieldwork combining interviews and analysis of court documents, this article studies the “evidentiary work” carried out by attorneys and experts involved in the current litigation over judicial executions by lethal injection in the USA. This execution method is supposed to kill the condemned “humanely” by anaesthetising them before injecting them with a lethal substance. Yet, it has been the subject of legal complaints since the early 2000s. These complaints claim that lethal injection, far from being humane, inflicts extreme and unconstitutional pain on those executed. Producing evidence of this pain, however, proves to be particularly difficult: inmates receiving injections are indeed inert and apparently unconscious, and only medical experts can detect any suffering they might be experiencing. First, the paper summarises the context of the emergence of this litigation centred on lethal injection. I then move on to analyse the “evidentiary work” involved in a particular trial held in Oklahoma City (Oklahoma) in early 2022. It focuses on the confrontation between anesthesiology expert witnesses in court and on their supporting repertoire of evidence, which includes data collected by sensors placed on the bodies of condemned prisoners, as well as their observations of executions they were allowed to witness. Despite a high level of technicality, their expertise nevertheless fails to make tangible what constitutes its main object: the degree of consciousness, and therefore of pain sensitivity, that condemned prisoners retain while they are being executed. |
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| ISSN: | 1763-0061 1963-1812 |