what's interesting about midazolam, when i give a patient midazolam, i can have a conversation with them after giving it to them, and afterwards, say we go ahead and conduct an anesthetic, later on i ask them do you recall the conversation we had, they will say no. not completely, but it can create that kind of amnesia. they still experience it in the moment. so the advantage of midazolam in an anesthetic, it is amnesia in the moment. but afterwards that's the point, and i can't ask an executed person, the amnesia they would have is useless to them, isn't it. >> that's a fascinating point. the idea that someone could still experience other things, despite being under the influence of that medication is a really important point. as you point out, we don't have the opportunity to go back and revault. you suggest in a usa today editorial, firing squad, guillotine, something like that. are you being facetious or honest? >> my view of the death penalty the rightness of wrongness is not at issue. i will tell you that lethal injection won't work. it won't work. even if it looks like it works, i

>> midazolam is a very commonly used drug.it in much smaller doses, 2, 3, milligrams for patients to help decrease anxiety and to have them not remember so when they go back to surgery, they don't remember the experience. muscle relaxants -- >> go on, go on. >> muscle relaxants are commonly used in the operating room. it's important, joy, to get this straight, though. what they're doing is not anesthesia. anesthesia is about taking care of patients. this is wholly unrelated to that. >> and i mean, i guess the reason why we're seeing this sort of experimentation that's happening, as you said not even consistently the same drugs, is why? because the former drugs that were used for this purpose are now off the market? it does seem like this is kind of random and kind of experimenting with what they think might work. >> well, it is random and sperpt i -- experimenting. if you look at history, sodium pentothal was used. then it stopped being made, then they went to another barbiturate, barbitol. some people took the compounding pat

it's called midazolam. forgive me if i'm mispronouncing it. they subed many midazolam as a sedative for the first drugs. oklahoma was just considering using just that as a sedative and a different kind of drug, a painkiller. turns out, though, that's a problem, because that was the combination of drugs that ohio used in january, and even if you don't pay any attention to the death penalty, you probably saw headlines about that ohio execution in january, because that's the one that went terribly, terribly wrong and got headlines for days. that was the one where for 26 minutes after he was injected, the man they were trying to kill gasped and convulsed and writhed in pain. that combination that did that with the sedative and the painkiller, that was the fourth option that oklahoma gave themselves out of the five. so turns out that's not going to be a great idea either. that left just one more idea for the great state of oklahoma. they decided to keep that are same first sedative drug, from the terrible botched execution in ohio in january, but i

, they're intended very similar to what was described back in the late '70s, the first drug, the midazolam is to put the inmate to sleep. the second drug, the paralytic, is to prevent the inmate from moving. and that's mostly for cosmesis. that does no advantage toward causing the inmate's death. it's merely to make it look pretty. the third drug, the potassium chloride-s designed to stop the heart, and that is what kills the inmate. >> so in terms of that second drug you're saying it's essentially there for the witnesses' benefit so that you don't see the prisoner writhe or move or physically react in any way. i guess the other side of that coin, does that also mean that if you are seeing the prisoner move or speak or writhe in some way it means that that second drug, that paralyzing agent hasn't taken for some reason? >> that's correct on both points. >> okay. based on the eyewitness descriptions and the information released by the state in terms of the way he reacted, does it seem like -- can you tell from those observations if any of the drugs had their intended effect? >> based on wha

>> based on what i have heard, it strikes me that some amount of the midazolam got into the inmate because he did appear to fall asleep at some point. and then it does seem that the iv became blown or that was no longer in place, so that when the injection of the second and third drug, the paralittic and the potassium chloride, caused a significant amount of pain because it was being injected into the soft tissue and so he responded to it. >> so meaning the blown vein in this case losing the iv connection as intended might have meant that the needle went through the side of his artery, through the side of his vein into his soft tissue, that's where the rest of that medication -- medication, i can't call it that. the rest of those pharmaceuticals went. they went basically into his leg, into his groin, instead of into his bloodstream? >> correct. >> and that would be a very painful thing? >> yes. >> in terms of how he died, a heart attack -- when they say that potassium chloride is designed to stop your heart and they also say that the cause of death here at least as far as they can tell is