Resuscitated man walking?

Say what you will about the death penalty – this is sick.

The first thing that strikes as disturbing about the recent execution of Clarence Ray Allen is that the state needed to inject him twice with potassium chloride to stop his heart. This hearkens back to the days when the Florida electric chair was so rusty that its switch had to be pulled twice as inmates would catch on fire. (“The Green Mile,” despite being a shamefully bad film, wasn't entirely off base in this frightful respect.)

Mr. Allen, interestingly, made a last ditch appeal to spare the execution on accounts of his age – having just turned 76, his geriatric claim of cruel and unusual punishment was certainly unique. But as CNN notes:

In the end, California's oldest condemned inmate did not seem quite as feeble as his attorneys made him out to be in their efforts to save his life.

Ann Althouse also has some interesting observations on this novel defense.

Still, things were sicker yet. Mr. Allen had a heart attack a few months back and after that event, according to CNN:

... asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.

"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him," then execute him.

Now, once again, let's put aside where we all stand on the larger question of the death penalty and think about this for a moment. If one is to accept that the state of California has deemed Mr. Allen's death to be a form of justice, then why on earth would the state be so opposed to his dying naturally? And does the quote about the sanctity of human life not stink of hypocrisy here?

It is almost as if justice could not be served any other way. There can be no punitive rationale – a dead man has no lessons to learn. And certainly it would seem foolish to raise a question of rehabilitation here. So does the state of California truly believe that the death penalty is meant solely for the family members of victims sitting in the audience?

(To be clear, this is somewhat of a hypothetical, though, as I haven't seen any reports of Mr. Allen going into cardiac arrest after his request and before his execution.)

This doesn't even make sense from an economic point of view. It is certainly cheaper to allow someone to die of natural causes than to execute them, though such should hardly be a consideration when the question of human life is in play.

And so I am simply stumped. How can the state claim to have an exclusive right to play the role of grim reaper and then be so bad at it that they need to try twice?