There is apparently a shortage of sodium thiopental, a drug mainly used to execute people. In a way, that is just as well. The death penalty is not a medical procedure, and should not be disguised as one. Gurneys, needles, and IVs are the instruments of health care, and not of its opposite. And it could be messy; I myself am aware of how much I must cooperate to even have my blood drawn! To be candid, my first preference would be for the guillotine. The executee does not suffer pain very long under the guillotine either. And the severed head can be held up afterwards. Those worthy of capital punishment are not old dogs, to be put down in their sleep. The guillotine, actually, would to me provide a death with the dignity deserved by those who bear the image of God and yet have destroyed or profoundly abused it in another human being.
I am willing to abolish lethal injection, in fact, even if it means we lose the death penalty altogether. The death penalty has been an important part of Christian civilization and civilization in general. But if the only choice is between converting it into a pseudo-medical procedure (a blasphemy of medicine) and to lose the death penalty altogether, I am wiling to surrender the death penalty.
Related: “Documents reveal California’s desperate search for execution drug” by Sam Stanton at SacBee.com