The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: lethal injection
Supreme Court Upholds Use Of Death Penalty Drug

Supreme Court Upholds Use Of Death Penalty Drug

By Michael Doyle, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — A bitterly divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld a drug combination used by Oklahoma to execute death row inmates.

In the most closely watched capital punishment case of the court’s term, and one that provoked strong feelings from both sides, a conservative 5-4 majority rejected a challenge to the sedative midazolam.

“The prisoners failed to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain, a requirement of all Eighth Amendment method-of-execution claims,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote.

The case called Glossip v. Gross is the Supreme Court’s first substantive death penalty decision since a 2008 decision that upheld Kentucky’s use of a lethal three-drug cocktail for executions. It brought to the fore intense emotions in a highly unusual scene, as four different justices read parts of their opinions from the bench.

“Rather than try to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one at a time, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution,” Justice Stephen Breyer declared in one of several dissenting opinions.

The decision came on the last day of the court’s term, when justices also upheld an Arizona redistricting commission and struck down EPA clean air rules.

The court’s new death penalty ruling comes about 14 months after Oklahoma’s execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett went horribly awry. Lockett writhed in apparent agony and remained alive for 43 minutes after being injected with an untested combination of chemicals.

The decision issued Monday, on the last day of the court’s 2014-15 term, did not judge the death penalty itself. In a 1976 decision, the Supreme Court ruled capital punishment did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, 1,410 U.S. inmates have been executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Instead, the new decision centered on the specific drugs used in lethal injection.

The court previously concluded in the 2008 Kentucky case that only measures that present a “substantial” or “objectively intolerable” risk of serious additional harm violate the Eighth Amendment.

In the botched Locket execution, Oklahoma used the sedative midazolam, along with pancuronium bromide, to paralyze the inmate, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. Midazolam was a substitute. American manufacturers stopped making sodium thiopental, the sedative at issue in the 2008 Kentucky case, and European manufacturers will not export it.

Other states, including Florida and Arizona, also used midazolam in lethal-injection executions last year. Florida Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi filed a brief supporting Oklahoma’s position, as did the attorneys general for other states including Idaho, Texas, and Georgia.

Still other states have adopted new execution protocols as an alternative to lethal injection, with the Utah Legislature in March approving use of firing squads as a backup method.

The ruling Monday came too late for one of the four inmates named in the original Oklahoma petition, Charles Warner, was executed last January. Warner was convicted of raping and killing an 11-month-old child.

The other three inmates, Richard E. Glossip, John M. Grant, and Benjamin R. Cole, are still awaiting execution. Glossip, whose name is first on the petition, was convicted in 1998 of first-degree murder. He maintains his innocence.

(c)2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Utah Lawmakers Pass Bill Allowing For Execution By Firing Squad

Utah Lawmakers Pass Bill Allowing For Execution By Firing Squad

By James Queally, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Utah will be able to use a firing squad to execute death row inmates when lethal-injection drugs are unavailable, as long as the governor signs a bill that cleared the state Senate on Tuesday.

The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Paul Ray, passed by a vote of 18 to 10. Ray introduced the legislation in December, but he said he began drafting it last March, long before a slew of executions in Oklahoma, Arizona and Ohio saw inmates gasping for air and cringing.

If Gov. Gary Herbert signs it, the bill will allow the Utah Department of Corrections to execute inmates by firing squad if the state does not have access to the drugs necessary to conduct a lethal injection. Ray said that Utah uses a three-drug cocktail to perform lethal injections, but that it no longer has access to pentobarbital, a necessary barbiturate for the procedure.

Utah and Oklahoma are the only states in the country where execution by firing squad is technically still legal. Death row inmates condemned in Utah before 2004 had the option to choose to die by firing squad.

“Any form of death is obviously a serious subject, so the two reasons I chose it were, obviously, No. 1, that’s what we’ve done in the past, and secondly, out of all the other options, it is the most humane,” Ray told the Los Angeles Times.

Utah has not executed a prisoner since 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner chose to die by firing squad, Ray said. Utah adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution in 2004, but inmates such as Gardner, who were sentenced before the law changed, had the option to die by firing squad.

The state is not scheduled to execute another prisoner until at least 2017, according to Ray, so it would be at least two years before a firing squad might be used in an execution.

Herbert has not said whether he will sign the bill, and a spokeswoman for Herbert told the Los Angeles Times that it was not clear when he would review Ray’s legislation.

In a statement, Herbert made clear that lethal injection is the preferred method of execution in the state, but he acknowledged that Utah officials had struggled to obtain pentobarbital.

“We are dedicated to pursuing all reasonable and legal options to obtain those substances to make sure that, when required, we are in a position to carry out this very serious sentence by lethal injection,” he said in the statement.

Since 1976, there have been only three executions by firing squad in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center, based in Washington, D.C.

In Oklahoma, death by firing squad remains legal only as a fail-safe, to be used in the event that death by lethal injection were ever ruled unconstitutional.

The use of lethal injection has been subject to scrutiny in the last year, as many defense attorneys and civil rights advocates have sued various states to obtain information about the drugs used in their execution cocktails.

Many states have turned to new chemical cocktails to carry out lethal injections, as foreign pharmaceutical companies that used to sell pentobarbital and phenobarbital in the U.S. have publicly opposed the drugs’ use in executions in recent years.

The use of new drugs has led to a series of seemingly painful, mishandled executions. Oklahoma officials chose to use a sedative known asmidazolam for the first time as part of the lethal cocktail used to execute Clayton Lockett in April, and it took 43 minutes for the convicted murderer to die.

Similar incidents were reported during executions in Arizona and Ohio last year, and Ohio chose to suspend all executions for one year after deciding to discontinue a lethal-injection cocktail that included midazolam.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

This November 30, 2009 photo shows the execution chamber of the “death house” at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio. Photo: Caroline Groussain via AFP

Lethal Injections Face Scrutiny After Two-Hour U.S. Execution

Lethal Injections Face Scrutiny After Two-Hour U.S. Execution

Washington (AFP) — The U.S. Supreme Court is under increasing pressure to consider halting death sentences by lethal injection after a convicted Arizona killer took two hours to die.

Opponents and supporters of capital punishment alike say they believe the highest U.S. court will agree to consider the issue.

Double murderer Joseph Wood gasped and snorted as he lay on a gurney for 117 minutes after officials from the U.S. state of Arizona injected him with a relatively untested lethal drug cocktail.

His was the third execution this year to have been drawn out far beyond the usual 10 minutes, as states face a shortage of tried and tested drugs after European manufacturers halted exports.

Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan on Thursday refuted suggestions Wood’s execution had been “botched,” insisting he was “comatose and never in pain” during the procedure.

But amid growing international uproar, opponents of the death penalty allege that the lengthy execution of Wood and others amount to a form of torture or the “cruel and unusual” punishment forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.

“It is one of a pattern of botched executions that has resulted from an unacceptable level of secrecy on the part of the Department of Corrections,” said Law Professor Deborah Denno of Fordham University.

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

Interested in U.S. politics? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Private Autopsy Blames Oklahoma For Botched Execution

Private Autopsy Blames Oklahoma For Botched Execution

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

A preliminary autopsy, carried out by a pathologist retained by Oklahoma death row prisoners, rejects the state’s explanation of a blown vein as the reason an inmate writhed in pain during a botched execution and puts the blame on Oklahoma officials for the problems.

The autopsy of Clayton Lockett, by Dr. Joseph I. Cohen, was released on Friday. State officials said they could not comment until their own investigation is completed in the next several weeks.

Lockett writhed, groaned and attempted to speak during the execution by lethal injection on April 29. He died 43 minutes after the execution began of what state officials said appeared to be a “massive heart attack.”

The botched execution, along with another troubled execution in Ohio, set off a national debate on the types and quality of the drugs used in the lethal injections. In Oklahoma, it also raised questions on the procedures. State officials have said Lockett’s veins had been blown, making it difficult to insert an intravenous line for the drugs to enter the bloodstream and do their work properly.

But Cohen’s examination found that “Lockett’s veins, both surface and deep, were in excellent shape ‘for the purpose of achieving venous access.”’ The Oklahoma execution team attempted to place the intravenous line for the lethal injection execution into Lockett’s femoral vein in the groin area, which Cohen said “is riskier, more difficult and more painful to place.”

“Contrary to statements by the state, Mr. Lockett’s veins did not collapse or ‘blow out,”’ according to Cohen’s findings. “Rather, despite the excellent condition of Mr. Lockett’s veins, the execution team made numerous failed attempts to set an IV, eventually setting an improperly placed and ineffective IV in Mr. Lockett’s femoral vein.”

On Friday, Capt. George Brown of the state’s Department of Public Safety said officials have not seen the private autopsy results. DPS is the agency overseeing the state investigation.

“We can’t comment on any other findings until our work is done,” Brown told the Los Angeles Times. “In six weeks we have conducted hundreds of interviews and are waiting on autopsy results. We hope to have our report done in the next several weeks.”

Oklahoma has imposed a moratorium on executions until the issues raised by the Lockett execution are examined.