Boston bomber sentenced to death. But can they find the right drugs to kill him?

The Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was today sentenced to death by lethal injection. The jury reached the decision in the city where the killer, 19 at the time, blew up the marathon, killing three and injuring 260.

I feel no sympathy for him, but nor do I support the death penalty and I’m constantly amazed by the hash the US authorities make of a method of execution that sounds simple. Here is a list of 46 botched executions since 1982. This one from last year almost defies belief in its amateurishness:

April 29, 2014. Oklahoma. Clayton D Lockett. Lethal Injection. Despite prolonged litigation and numerous warnings from defence attorneys about the dangers of using an experimental drug protocol (including a paralytic), Oklahoma went ahead and scheduled the executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner. Plans for the execution and the drugs used were cloaked in secrecy, with the state refusing to release information about the source and efficacy of the lethal drugs, making it impossible to accurately predict the effects of the combination of drugs.