A more "humane" way to execute?

Story here.

When a state panel recommended last April that Tennessee abandon the three chemicals used in executions across the nation in favor of the single drug usually used in animal euthanasia, the state’s corrections commissioner said no. . . .

“If you change,” Professor Denno continued, “you’re admitting there was something wrong with the prior method. All those people you were executing, you could have been doing it in a better, more humane way.” . . .

Lethal injection protocols nationwide were copied from one developed in Oklahoma in 1977 — the year after the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty — based on advice from a medical school professor to a state senator. They call for a short-acting barbiturate to render the inmate unconscious, followed by a paralytic and then a chemical to stop the heart.

If the first chemical works, there is no dispute that the process is quick and painless. If it does not, there is no dispute that the inmate will suffer intense and terrifying pain. But because the inmate is paralyzed, it may not be possible to tell whether the first drug worked. . . .

Dr. Gray, who has since died, had only one objection, Dr. Etheredge recalled. “He said it was a great idea except that people would think we are treating people the same way that we’re treating animals. He was afraid of a hue and cry.” . . .

These days, opponents of that protocol make the opposite argument of the one Dr. Gray feared. They say that death row inmates deserve to be treated at least as well as animals. . . .