How Lethal Injection Works

Photo courtesy California Department of Corrections Execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison in California. See more lethal injection pictures.

For thousands of years, many governments have punished people convicted of certain crimes by putting them to death, using various means to accomplish this. The death penalty is considered by many to be the ultimate form of punishment for those who have committed society's most heinous crimes, including rape and murder. As times have changed, so have the methods of execution.

The idea of someone being put to death is not a pleasant one. About 74 of the world's countries and 38 American states have a death penalty (although the vast majority of executions in 2004 took place in China, Iran, Vietnam and the United States), so this unpleasant topic is bound to come up [ref]. The form by which prisoners are executed is changing. In America and a growing number of other countries, lethal injection is becoming the most commonly used form of capital punishment. In this article, we'll examine how lethal injection is carried out and what a prisoner experiences in the days prior to execution.