“When the United States at last abandons the abhorrent practice of capital punishment, the early years of the 21st century will stand out as a peculiar period during which otherwise reasonable people hotly debated how to kill other people while inflicting the least amount of constitutionally acceptable pain.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/opinion/the-humane-death-penalty-charade.html
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/death-penalty-pain/