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If we don't want to be as barbaric as the one we are executing, why can we not place the offender under general anesthesia before administering the death sentence? 
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state ... 005be.html
Gleason set for execution by electric chair tonight
Gleason, who has said that execution is the only way to stop him, is set to die today
BY FRANK GREEN Richmond Times-Dispatch Richmond Times-Dispatch
Barring the unlikely and unsought intervention of the courts, Robert Charles Gleason Jr.’s quest to be executed will end tonight in Virginia’s electric chair.
An unrepentant Gleason, 42, was sentenced to die for the 2009 slaying of Harvey Gray Watson Jr., 63, his cellmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison, and for the 2010 slaying of Aaron Alexander Cooper, 26, at Red Onion State Prison.
Gleason killed his fellow inmates — he managed the second while in solitary confinement — while serving life without parole for shooting a man to death in Amherst County in 2007.
He has refused to appeal the death sentences and told lawyers not to oppose his execution, scheduled for 9 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center about an hour south of Richmond on Interstate 95.
Gleason told The Associated Press that execution was the only way to stop him from killing.
“The death part don’t bother me. This has been a long time coming. It’s called karma,” he said.
In upholding Gleason’s death sentences last year, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote: “The murders were both clearly premeditated and accomplished by means of ligature strangulation, a very deliberate and personal method of killing.
“They both involved taunting or torture indicative of a high level of cruelty: Watson was tied up, beaten, taunted, given his last cigarette and then had a urine sponge stuffed in his face, while Cooper was repeatedly strangled and permitted to catch his breath before he was killed.”
The Virginia Supreme Court held that Gleason “has shown from his actions that he is capable of orchestrating a murder in Virginia’s most secure prison.”
This month in a federal courtroom where lawyers were trying to represent him, Gleason told the judge, “I deserve this. I’ve hurt people. This is the charge, and this is the punishment.”
“I don’t want an attorney. I want to let the Jan. 16 day go as is,” he said.
The lawyers’ requests to be appointed and to win a hearing to establish his competency were turned down in U.S. District Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, leading to a motion for a stay in the U.S. Supreme Court.
A 2010 evaluation conducted while he was awaiting trial for the Wallens Ridge slaying found Gleason has a history of substance abuse, depression and other problems but concluded that he was not suicidal and was competent to stand trial.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said, “I think it’s unlikely there will be a stay.”
While the federal courts consider such cases seriously, they don’t like eleventh-hour appeals, and in this case, even the condemned person has not authorized the request, so “it seems to me it’s uphill, to be sure.”
Gov. Bob McDonnell last week said he would not intervene.
If carried out, it would be the 110th execution in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976. The most recent Virginia execution was in 2011.
Since Jan. 1, 1995, when condemned inmates were given the choice between lethal injection or electrocution, 79 have died by injection and six in the electric chair. If an inmate refuses to choose, the default means is lethal injection.
According to Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, vigils for Gleason and his victims are set to be held this evening at various locations throughout the state, including a field outside the prison.
Gleason is a native of Lowell, Mass., and according to the Lowell Sun, his family arranged to have a paid obituary appear in the newspaper Thursday.
The newspaper reported that according to the obituary, Gleason is an award-winning tattoo artist, was known as “Smilin’ Bob,” and attended Greater Lowell Technical High School and went to art school in North Carolina.
fgreen@timesdispatch.com
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