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Literally nothing is unusual if u do it enough times.

And the way they determine "unusual" is by doing this absolutely ahistoric, arbitrary polling of current policy. They cherry pick whatever statistics serve the politics of the person writing the decision.

e.g., when ruling whether it was "unusual" to execute people with cogitative disabilities (Atkins v. Virginia), they did a tally of how many states allowed execution in these cases vs did not but deliberately omitted how many states do not allow ANY executions. Then concluded that slightly more states allow executions of the mentally unfit than don't even though it was absolutely incontestable fact that the vast majority of states did not allow this kind of execution.

Ignore that the ruling technically banned those executions... because it factually didn't, since it left it up to states to define cognitive disability however they pleased and the behavior of the kill-happy states was not affected by the ruling.

Did you know it was going to kill you if it worked? Because that would be the cruel part. Imagine knowing, for days, maybe even months after your last appeal that you were going to die. You know the exact date and time. You know nothing you can do will stop it.

How is that not cruel?

Reasons aside, they were killing this man. Sounds pretty cruel when you add that little caveat.

I bet some phlebotomists could be convinced.

Some prisons do employ doctors. But they're generally just treating prisoners, not helping with this kind of thing.

However it has been revealed at times that there's been at least a handful of physicians who have helped with lethal injections. To be clear, every code of ethics, medical board, and every professional physician organization roundly condemns any participation in these. Some states like Georgia have specifically made laws preventing medical boards in their state from disciplining physicians who do so if it's found out (as any medical board likely would try to do).

Often it is passed to people with no medial experience as you said, but there have been at least a handful of healthcare workers who have participated in them at times. How widespread it is isn't super clear, as anyone involved for the most part has tried to keep it secret, and the prison system has no desire to reveal this either.

And I think it's incredibly damaging to society and trust with health care workers as a whole to have these death penalty states trying to involve health care workers in this, even if only a tiny handful have actually done so. If they're really intent on continuing this barbaric practice just make it a firing squad, leave medical workers out of it. I'd personally favor just getting rid of the death penalty altogether. Not worth it for so many reasons.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/lethal-injection-and-physicians-state-law-vs-medical-ethics

Are medical doctors actually allowed to be prison executioners?

As someone who's been stuck several times before the person with medical training taps in the next person, who also needs several tries, it is not my experience that you can always find a vein (unless I'm just really unlucky and the hospital employs a lot of incompetent people). Sometimes a nurse can get blood out on the first try, but sometimes they're sticking both arms and moving onto my hands and I end up with two arms covered in bruises the next day. Sometimes they go get a pediatric needle and that helps. Last time, we called in the "IV Team" who used an ultrasound to place my IV. Some of us just have difficult veins.

Also cheaper too.

I'm a phlebotomist and this is correct, there's also many other factors that can result in missing a vein, dehydration being the biggest factor and even just the size of the vein.

With me it even depends on the arm. I get my blood checked yearly and they always try the right arm first by default, and they're always struggling to find a suitable vein near the surface. Then I offer them to try my left arm and it's done within 10 seconds.