guess what the difference is between these drugs and the ones the hospice uses on patients to ease their pain and suffering
nothing
Except that hospice patients have something else that is expediting their deaths: terminal disease. The drugs delivered are not meant to kill the patient, only to ease pain.
That is very different when using the same drugs to actually cause the death itself, especially in someone who likely does not have terminal disease, who likely has a better functioning liver, and likely has a better functioning kidney.
Hospice patients also receive scopolamine patches or glycopyrrolate to decrease the thick oral secretions. Did the inmate receive those while he accumulated secretions over the course of 2 hours? The news report did not say.
This inmate likely had a last meal and hence a full stomach after which he was then laid supine and given sedatives that relaxed his muscles. Did he aspirate during his death? Do you consider aspiration acceptable as part of a humane treatment? Most hospice patients at the very end of their lives are usually too sick to eat, much less take in a full several course meal, and thus do not have full stomachs to regurgitate. Unlike a paralytic, which can relax a stomach, benzos and opioids aren't expected to relax a stomach and vomiting is a definite possibility. The inmate was obviously still strong enough to maintain a gag reflex despite overdose.
i personally think this combo is more humane and harder to fuck up then the previous combo of anesthetic, paralytic, and potassium.
The prevalence of news stories these days compared to the past don't support that notion. And I disagree that a benzo/opoiod is easier to titrate compared to anesthetic, paralytic and potassium for the purpose of killing. If a benzo and an opioid combination was "harder to fuck up" compared to an anesthetic, then anesthesia would be unnecessary as a needed medical field. Moreover, a patient isn't obviously gasping when administered a paralytic. Say what you want about sedation, but you're failing at convincing laymen that gasping is okay.
and regarding experimenting, you'd be hard pressed to find a doc unfamiliar with a benzo/opiate combo
But you will be hard pressed to find a doc who knows how much benzos and opioids to administer to "properly" kill someone. You can't prove from the report that the patient was not underdosed.
I can easily kill you with midazolam 10 mg and fentanyl 100 mcg. These aren't typical overdose strengths. All I have to do is take away the supplemental oxygen and let you desaturate to 70% for many hours while you aspirate your secretions. You'll then suffer from anoxic brain injury and be declared brain dead within 48 hours. You won't feel a thing, so that should be humane, right?