Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

Answer 1

All needles are sterilized before hand. I think the bigger question is why do they wipe the injection site with alcohol before inserting the needle.

Answer 2

OK, this is not a serious question but I will take the 2 points. As stated above, they simply get a new needle out of the package. It is already sterile.

A better question might be why did a Republican, law and order tough guy, governor in Illinois put a moratorium on the death penalty. Why was it so easy for students from Northwestern University to find ELEVEN people on death row that they could PROVE were innocent! Why does Texas execute one person per week. Why are we one of the only countries in the world that will execute mentally retarded individuals and minors?

On the other side of the coin, what do you do in a state like Wisconsin that doesn't have the death penalty when you sentence an individual to life in prison without parole? Haven't you just given that person a license to kill other prisoners?

But its a good thing that those mentally challenged individuals who we are killing won't get an infection from a dirty needle.

Answer 3

Just in case they get a call from officials to stop the procedure in time, before the chemicals take effect. This has happened before. Not with lethal injection. But it has happened with the gas chambers. I can't remember now who it was, but back in the early 50's or late 40's a call came through because the real guilty person confessed. Unfortunately the call came too late. The misjudged person was already dead. Sad things like this does happen and could happen again. So sterilizing the needle is an extra precaution.

Answer 4

I also don't know

However I think the answer is that
they make the person sleep by injecting him.
then, usually the PRESIDENT of the COUNTRY will call the Lethal injection chamber to give the final say if the person will be killed or the operation be cancelled.

That's why they sterilize the needles, so that if the operation?? is cancelled or something the person is safe from infection.



^_^
well, I really don't know the answer I just made it up. But, I think my answer makes sense ^_^

Answer 5

Great question, and it raises another equally oxymoronic question. When a person is dead, and the medical examiner obtains a blood specimen to determine their blood alcohol and the presence of drugs or toxins, do they use an alcohol swab to sterilize the skin? If they do, does that compromise the validity of the blood alcohol determination?
Do they actually sterilize the needle for a lethal injection? That is a good question, too.

Answer 6

Just in case the people who are doing the injection attempt to inject the needle and then accidentally poke themselves after the needle as came into contact with the blood of the person to be executed. Thus transferring whatever infections the one to be executed has to the ones that are doing the injections.

Answer 7

Because they package injection needles after they have been sterilized and nobody will get a used needle from a hospital incase the prick themselves getting one out of the used needle box.

Answer 8

It is not so much that they go to the trouble to sterilize the needle as it is that all needles out there come sterilized. It would be much more difficult to procure an unsterilized needle than it would be to just use the sterilized ones.

Answer 9

It is a matter of legality. If the person dies by lethal injection then the state and prison system has no liability; if the person dies or is injured by an infection or disease then the state is liable. It also eliminates some ambulance chaser working for the next of kin to sue for some type of negligence.

Answer 10

They don't sterilize the needles they use new ones so they do get a blood disease. It don't make much since because there going to die anyway but the law is wierd so . . . . .