Lethal Injection

TEXAS – EXECUTION TODAY 11/08/12 – Mario Swain EXECUTED 6.39 pm

Mario Swain, 33, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 6.39 pm (0039 GMT Friday), according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. When asked by a warden if he had a final statement before his punishment, the condemned prisoner shook his head, closed his eyes and took several barely audible breaths.

No family members or friends of Nixon were at the execution. Swain also had no relatives among the witnesses.

November 8,2012

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A man who was sentenced to die in the fatal beating, stabbing and strangling of an East Texas call center supervisor a decade ago displayed a pattern of obsession and violence that a former district attorney said indicated the potential of a serial killer.

Mario Swain has since lost state and federal appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to review his case. Swain, 33, is scheduled for execution Thursday.

Worried friends alerted police when Lola Nixon didn’t show up for dinner two nights after Christmas in 2002. Officers discovered signs of forced entry at her home near Dallas — and blood throughout — but no sign of the 46-year-old woman. A neighbor said he saw a truck parked outside the night she went missing, and police traced that vehicle to a man who said his grandson, Swain, had borrowed it.

Swain gave several confessions, and said his friends had beaten Nixon while burgling her home. But those friends all had credible alibis.

Eventually he led detectives to Nixon’s body, in the backseat of an abandoned vehicle at a remote site in Gregg County. She had been beaten with a tire iron, stabbed and strangled.

“Unless you knew where you were going, you wouldn’t get there,” Lance Larison, a prosecutor at Swain’s 2004 trial, said.

Evidence indicates Nixon fiercely resisted the attack and that Swain left her bleeding in her bathtub before throwing her in the back of her BMW and driving her to the site where she was found. He then returned to her house and tried to clean up.

The tire iron was recovered from a trash container where Swain said he had thrown it. Prosecutors said Swain used Nixon’s credit cards and that he gave a piece of her jewelry to a friend.

Nixon’s blood was found on Swain’s clothing in the truck, along with her car keys and garage door opener.

At trial, prosecutors presented evidence and witnesses that showed a pattern of crimes: Swain gathered information about women he wanted to rob, then attacked them, forcing them to inhale the anesthetic halothane and hitting them over the head with a wrench or shooting them with a stun gun.

“Not only did he stalk, he started making physical assaults,” Larison said.

“Girlfriends told us he loved to watch detective shows, crime science shows, that he was fascinated by them,” he said. “He would keep lists of women’s cars and certain license plates.”

He was “a serial killer in training,” the prosecutor said.

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court rejected Swain’s appeal that argued his confessions to the slaying should not have been allowed at trial, that his lawyers were deficient and that there was a problem in jury selection. The U.S. Supreme Court three weeks ago refused to review Swain’s case. And last week the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused an appeal challenging an investigator’s trial testimony.

Nixon was unmarried and lived alone. She had been a supervisor at a telephone call center in Longview where Swain once worked.

Swain declined from death row to speak with reporters as his execution date neared.

His lethal injection would be the 13th this year in Texas, where two more executions are set for next week.

OKLAHOMA – EXECUTION, GARRY ALLEN 11/06/2012, EXECUTED 6.10 P.M

November 6, 2012 http://mcalesternews.com

March 7, 2012 dead
Oklahoma death row inmate Garry Thomas Allen, 56, was executed this evening in the death chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Witnessing the execution were two media representatives, two of Allen’s attorneys, the victim’s sister-in-law, Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Justin Jones and several Department of Corrections employees.

At 5:58 p.m., Jones gave the go-ahead for the execution procedure to begin and the blinds between the witness area and the execution chamber were raised.

Allen raised his head from the execution gurney and looked into the witness room. His eyes wandered until they landed on familiar faces. When he saw his attorneys he said, “Hi.” And they lifted their hands and waved at him.

Allen then began to talk. He rambled unintelligibly about Obama and Romney. Allen’s garbled speech about the presidential race coincided with a loud banging noise as the other inmates in H-Unit said their good-byes.

“Obama won two out of three counties. It’s going to be a very close race,” Allen said just before Oklahoma State Penitentiary Deputy Warden Art Lightle asked him if he had a last statement.

Allen looked at Lightle and asked, “Huh?” Then he continued in his garbled speech and then again raised his head and said, “Hi,” to his attorneys. Allen’s unintelligible ramblings continued. He spoke about Obama and Jesus.

“I hope that more realize Jesus is the son of God — the only son of God. Jesus is the one and only savior,” Allen said. This statement was followed by more unintelligible ramblings.

Lightle told Allen that his two minutes were coming to an end. Allen turned his head to look at Lightle and asked, “What?” Then he continued his garbled speech.

One of Allen’s attorneys began to get teary eyed and she leaned down and placed her head in her hands. At 6:02 p.m., when she sat back up, and as Allen’s unintelligible talking continued, Lightle said, “Let the execution begin.”

Allen again turned his head and looked at Lightle and asked, “Huh?”

Then he lifted his head and looked at the witnesses, fixing his eyes on his attorneys. “Hi,” he said to them again. And again they both lifted their hands and waved at him.

His garbled speech continued until the concoction of execution drugs apparently affected his system. He turned and lifted his head one last time and looked at Lightle. He made a loud, strained grunting sound and laid his head back down on the gurney.

At 6:07 p.m., the attending physician checked Allen’s vital signs and said something about a pulse. The physician rubbed Allen’s chest and then stepped away as Allen’s attorney wiped a tear from her cheek.

The physician stepped back to Allen’s body minutes later, checked his vital signs and pronounced Allen’s death at 6:10 p.m.

The victim’s family submitted the following written statement following Allen’s execution:

“Our beloved Gail — daughter, sister and mother of two young boys was taken from our family tragically and senselessly due to domestic violence.

“For over 25 years we have waited for justice to be served and for this sentence to be carried out.

“We are thankful to close the book on this chapter today, but we will never stop grieving the loss of Gail.

“It has been an emotional roller coaster for our family and one we have endured far too long.

“Gail’s memory will continue to live on through the lives of her now grown sons and her grandchildren.”

This was not the first time Allen was scheduled for execution. In April, officials at the OSP conducted normal execution day procedures while waiting to find out about approval or disapproval of an appeal filed with the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals

A stay was issued for Allen one day before his scheduled execution on April 12.

“A federal judge stayed Garry Allen’s execution,” said OSP Warden’s Assistant Terry Crenshaw in April. U.S. District Judge David L. Russell issued the stay, ruling that Allen’s claims that he is insane and ineligible for the death penalty should be reviewed. Allen had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and his attorneys argued his mental state deteriorated on death row.

“Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has filed a notice of appeal to the stay of execution,” Crenshaw said in April. If the appeal to the stay of execution was granted, officials at OSP had “measures in place to carry out the execution according to court orders.” However, Pruitt’s appeal was not granted at that time.

Allen was also set for execution on Feb. 16, but Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin granted a 30-day stay of execution for the condemned man. She said the stay was issued so her legal team could have more time to consider a 2005 recommendation by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to commute his sentence to life.

“Having thoroughly reviewed the arguments and evidence presented in this case, I have determined that clemency should be denied in this case, and that the sentence of death be carried out,” Fallin wrote in an executive order filed March 13.

The 30-day stay would have set Allen’s execution for March 17, but that date was moved to April 12, before being stayed yet again.

Allen received his death sentence for the 1986 murder of his 24-year-old wife, Lawanna Gail Titsworth. The McAlester News-Capital reported in May of 2008 that Allen’s conviction and death sentence came after he gunned down Titsworth four days after she moved out of their home with their two sons, who were 6 and 2 at the time.

Allen was first scheduled to be executed May 19, 2005. A stay of execution was granted by Judge Thomas Bartheld one day before his scheduled execution. The Associated Press reported Allen’s mental competency was in question after a psychological exam at OSP indicated he had developed mental problems while confined on death row. The doctor’s report noted Allen had dementia caused by seizures, drug abuse and being shot in the face.

The U.S. Supreme Court and state law prohibit execution of inmates who are insane or mentally incompetent.

On May 1, 2008, a Pittsburg County jury decided, on split decision, that Allen is “sane to be executed.” For more than three years since, numerous court motions and legal arguments have been heard in the case.

On Dec. 28, Bartheld signed a legal order vacating Allen’s stay of execution, stating “the court … having reviewed the pleadings, finds that the issue of the sanity of Garry Thomas Allen for execution has been resolved…”

On Nov. 21, 1986, reports indicate Allen went to his children’s daycare center in Oklahoma City when his wife, Titsworth, was scheduled to pick them up. Titsworth had gone to the parking lot when Allen confronted her, according to court records. As Titsworth opened the door to her truck, Allen shut the door and prevented her from entering, court documents state.

As the two argued, Allen reached into his sock, pulled out a revolver and shot Titsworth twice in the chest.

“It is unclear whether Titsworth was holding her youngest son at the time of the shooting or had picked him up immediately thereafter,” documents filed with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Criminal Appeals state.

After Allen shot Titsworth, she begged him not to shoot her again and fell to the ground. Allen then asked Titsworth if she was all right and lifted up her blouse, apparently attempting to examine her injuries.

“At the time of the shooting, some of the daycare employees were in the parking lot and several of the children were in a van parked a few feet from Titsworth’s truck,” court documents state.

“After the shooting, Titsworth managed to get up and start running toward the building along with a daycare center employee.”

As they headed up the steps leading to the front door, Allen pushed the daycare employee through the door and shoved Titsworth down on the steps, where he shot her twice in the back at close range.

Oklahoma City police officer Mike Taylor responded to a 911 call within minutes and a witness pointed to an alley where Allen was hiding. Taylor spotted Allen in the alley, pulled his revolver and ordered him to stop and remain still.

Although Allen initially complied with the order, he turned and began walking away. When Taylor reached out to place a hand on him, Allen quickly turned and grabbed the policeman’s gun.

During a struggle, Allen gained partial control of the gun and “attempted to make officer Taylor shoot himself by applying pressure to Taylor’s finger which was still on the trigger,” court documents state.

As the struggle continued, Taylor regained control of the gun and shot Allen in the face, according to court records.

Allen was hospitalized for approximately two months for injuries to his face, left eye and brain. Afterwards, he entered a blind plea — meaning no plea bargain agreement had been reached — to first-degree murder and other charges on Nov. 10, 1987.

An Oklahoma County judge subsequently sentenced Allen to death. The appeals court later ordered a second sentence hearing, which also resulted in the death sentence.

According to the Oklahoma Department of Correction’s website, at http://www.doc.state.ok.us, Allen had been incarcerated at OSP since Dec. 23, 1987, and was housed on death row in the prison’s H-Unit.

 

TEXAS – Execution – Donnie Lee Roberts – 31/10/2012 – EXECUTED 6.39 p.m

“I’m really sorry. I never meant to cause you all so much pain,” Roberts said to Bowen’s father, who was seated in a chair close to a glass window in the death chamber viewing area. “I hope you can go on with your life.

“I loved your daughter. I hope to God he lets me see her in heaven so I can apologize to her and see her and tell her.”

Roberts also asked two of his friends who watched through another window to tell his own daughter he loved her.

He repeated that he was sorry and took several deep breaths as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began taking effect. He snored briefly before slipping into unconsciousness, and was pronounced dead 23 minutes later.

Last Meal: Same shit salad being fed to every other thug on the row that day

October 30, 2012  http://www.beaumontenterprise.com

This handout photo provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows Donnie Roberts. Roberts, a Louisiana parole violator, is set to die Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, for killing his girlfriend Vicki Bowen at her home in Lake Livingston, Texas, in October 2003. Photo: Texas Department Of Public Safety / AP

HUNTSVILLE, Texas  — Donnie Lee Roberts, convicted in his girlfriend’s 2003 slaying, was taken from his death row cell Wednesday and moved to the Texas prison where executions are carried out, one of the final steps before his scheduled lethal injection.

After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Roberts’ case earlier this week, no additional appeals were filed to try to block his execution, which will be the 12th this year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state.

Roberts, now 41, is being put to death for fatally shooting Vicki Bowen and taking items from her East Texas home to sell or trade to support his drug habit. At the time of his arrest for the October 2003 killing, Roberts had violated his probation for a robbery conviction in Louisiana by fleeing to Texas after dropping out of a drug treatment program.

Authorities said he apparently met Bowen, 44, a dental assistant, at a bar and moved in with her at her home on Lake Livingston, about 75 miles northeast of Houston. Their relationship soured because Roberts wasn’t working and was abusing drugs and alcohol, investigators said, and he shot Bowen after she refused his demand for money.

Roberts was arrested at a suspected crack house in Livingston when a truck missing from Bowen’s home was spotted there the same day Bowen’s body was discovered.

“He was cooperative and confessed several times,” District Attorney Lee Hon said. “He was saying he wanted the death penalty.”

Roberts told authorities he made several trips from the house where Bowen was shot, collecting property that he took into town to sell and trade for crack.

He also surprised detectives by confessing to the shotgun death of a man a decade earlier in Natchitoches Parish, La. Louisiana authorities initially believed the victim, Al Crow, had died of asphyxiation in a fire at the camper trailer where he was living but reopened the case following Roberts’ disclosure, found shotgun pellets and determined it was a homicide.

Roberts was charged with murder but not tried for Crow’s death.

Stephen Taylor, one of Roberts’ lawyers at his Texas capital murder trial, said the confessions complicated his trial defense.

“It’s almost like somebody saying he was a serial killer, that he’s killed before and he killed again,” Taylor said. “It’s one thing to say you have the right to remain silent. Use it!

“It’s always sad for someone to lose his life, especially for something so stupid.”

Bowen didn’t show up for work on Oct. 16, 2003, and a co-worker who went to check on her found her body wrapped in a blanket and lying in a pool of blood. A medical examiner determined Bowen was killed with two gunshots to her head.

Roberts took the witness stand and tried to blame Bowen for the gunfire, saying he was acting in self-defense by grabbing a .22-caliber rifle after seeing her reach down inside a couch to locate a pistol that was kept there.

“The jury obviously disagreed,” Hon said.

Evidence at trial showed Roberts had a record for battery while being held in jail in Fulton County, Ga., that he’d threatened his wife to give him money for drugs, and that he demanded a single-person cell in Polk County when he was jailed for Bowen’s murder or there would be another killing.

His robbery conviction in Louisiana was for a Mother’s Day 2001 convenience store holdup in Baton Rouge, La., where the knife-wielding Roberts threatened to slice the throat of the female clerk.

“He was a bad dude, pretty violent,” Hon said.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit, where the state’s male death row is housed, has been Roberts’ home since his capital murder conviction in 2004. The unit is just outside Livingston and not far from where Bowen was killed.

On Wednesday, Roberts was moved about 45 miles west to the Huntsville Unit prison, where he is to be executed.

Three more Texas prisoners are set to die in November, including one next week.

SOUTH DAKOTA – EXECUTION DONALD MOELLER, 10/30/2012 EXECUTED 10.24 P.M

Before being given a lethal injection at a South Dakota penitentiary, Moeller, 60, was asked if he had any last words.

‘No sir,’ he said, then added: ‘They’re my fan club?’

Donald Moeller, 60, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, marking South Dakota’s second execution this month in an unusual surge for a state that has carried out just two other death sentences since 1913. He was pronounced dead at 10:24 p.m.

last meal Tuesday of scrambled eggs, link sausage, tater tots and drip coffee.

OCTOBER 30,2012 http://www.chicagotribune.com

This frame grab provided by KELO-TV shows convicted killer Donald Moeller during a court appearance in Sioux Falls, S.D., Wednesday, July 18, 2012.  Ronal Moeller  Taken: Becky O'Connell was in the fourth grade when she set out to walk a few blocks from home to buy sugar to make lemonade, but never returnedBecky O’Connell

(Reuters) – A man convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl after kidnapping her from a convenience store in 1990 is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday night in South Dakota, the state’s second execution this month.

Donald Moeller, 60, who had declared his innocence and fought for two decades to prevent his execution, admitted during a court hearing in early October that he had committed the crime and stopped appeals that would further delay his death sentence from being carried out.

His execution is scheduled for 10 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday at the state prison in Sioux Falls.

According to court records, Moeller abducted Becky O’Connell from a Sioux Falls convenience store where she had gone to buy candy and repeatedly raped and stabbed her. Her body was found in a wooded area the next morning with extensive knife wounds.

Moeller was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death in 1992, but was granted a new trial after the state Supreme Court ruled that testimony of previous attempted sexual assaults on three other people should not have been permitted.

Moeller was convicted and sentenced to death again in 1997. He continued appeals until recent weeks but at a federal court hearing in early October he admitted the crimes.

“If the rape and murder of Rebecca O’Connell does not deserve the death penalty, then I guess nothing does,” Moeller told the judge, according to court records.

Executions have been rare in South Dakota. Before this year, the state had put to death only two inmates since 1913. On Oct 15, it executed Eric Robert on October 15 for the killing of prison guard Ron Johnson during a failed escape attempt.

If Moeller’s lethal injection is carried out on Tuesday, he will be the 34th inmate executed in the United States in 2012, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

South Dakota covers up source of death penalty drugs ahead of execution

Prison authorities in South Dakota are refusing to release information on contaminated drugs made to order for an execution tonight (30 October).

The so-called ‘DIY drugs’ – doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital produced by a compounding pharmacy for the South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) – were used to execute Eric Robert earlier this month, with alarming results. Robert’s eyes opened during the lethal injection process, a sign that he may not have been properly anaesthetised and the execution may have been botched.

The ingredients used to make the drugs used in Eric Robert’s execution – and set to be used this evening in that of Donald Moeller – were found to have been contaminated with fungus.

However, despite these indications that the drugs may be faulty, and therefore carrying a risk of unnecessary suffering for the prisoner, South Dakota has thus far refused to disclose any information on how they were obtained.

The drugs are known to have been made by a compounding pharmacy – a service which allows batches of drugs to be made up to order, thereby allowing customers to bypass mainstream pharmaceutical suppliers which face more comprehensive regulation. The compounding pharmacy industry has been in the spotlight lately after reports linked it to a widespread outbreak of meningitis in the US.

South Dakota DOC had previously intended to use drugs they had illegally imported from a supplier in India in the executions, but these drugs expired last month.

Maya Foa, investigator for the legal charity Reprieve said: “The use of these DIY execution drugs means that we have little idea of just what is being injected into prisoners’ veins. It is no surprise that prison authorities appear so desperate to cover up any information on where they have come from, or who made them. The South Dakota Department of Corrections must come clean: it is indefensible for the ultimate punishment to be carried out in this slipshod and unaccountable manner.”

TEXAS – EXECUTION TODAY- ANTHONY HAYNES – 6 p.m STAYED

October 18, 2012 

Anthony Haynes, 33, would be the 11th inmate executed this year in Texas and the 33rd in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The execution is scheduled for after 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) in Huntsville.

Haynes fired a shot from his truck at a Jeep Cherokee carrying off-duty Houston police officer Kent Kincaid and his wife, Nancy, according to an account of the case from the Texas attorney general’s office.

The officer got out of his Jeep and approached Haynes‘ truck, telling him that he was a police officer and asking to see his driver’s license, the account said.

Nancy Kincaid said during Haynes’ trial that her husband was reaching for his badge when the driver shot him in the head, according to a Houston Chronicle account at the time.

“(The driver) pulled his hand up and I saw the flash and I heard the pop,” Nancy Kincaid testified. “That was the end. He then went down.”

Kent Kincaid was declared brain-dead at the hospital.

That same night, Haynes had committed several armed robberies, Texas officials say.

“I’m not a vicious psychopath who goes around wanting to take people’s lives,” Haynes told the Houston Chronicle in a 2001 death row interview. “There was no intent to kill a cop. He did not ID himself until a second before I shot him.”

Haynes has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, raising questions about whether his trial lawyers were effective.

Related articles

Death row suffers setback, Propofol won’t be sold for use in executions.

September 28, 2012 http://www.columbiatribune.com

A manufacturer of the anesthetic blamed for Michael Jackson’s death said yesterday it won’t sell propofol for use in U.S. executions, a setback for Missouri and other states seeking an alternative after other drug makers also objected to their products’ use in lethal injections.

Drug maker Fresenius Kabi USA, a German company with U.S. offices based in Schaumburg, Ill., is one of only two domestic suppliers of propofol and is the only one currently distributing in the United States. Earlier this year, Missouri adopted a new single-drug execution method that would make it the first state to use propofol on death-row inmates. Other states also have considered incorporating the drug into their lethal injections.

Fresenius Kabi spokesman Matt Kuhn confirmed to The Associated Press that the company told its distributors in late August that such usage is “inconsistent” with the company’s mission. It’s also forbidden under European Union laws to export drugs that could be used in executions.

“Fresenius Kabi objects to the use of its products in any manner that is not in full accordance with the medical indications for which they have been approved by health authorities,” a company statement reads. “Consequently, the company does not accept orders for propofol from any departments of correction in the United States. Nor will it do so.”

Most of the 33 states with the death penalty had long used sodium thiopental as the first of a three-drug combination administered during lethal injections. But that drug also became unavailable when its European supplier acknowledged pressure from death penalty opponents and stopped selling it for executions.

Supplies mostly ran out or expired, forcing states to consider alternatives. Most states have retained the three-drug method but turned to pentobarbital, a barbiturate used to treat anxiety and convulsive disorders such as epilepsy, as a replacement for sodium thiopental. Pentobarbital supplies also have shrunk after its manufacturer said it would try to prevent its use in executions.

A spokeswoman for the Missouri attorney general’s office declined comment yesterday, and Department of Corrections officials didn’t respond to several requests seeking comment about Fresenius Kabi’s decision. In August, the state Supreme Court declined Attorney General Chris Koster’s request to set execution dates for six death-row inmates, calling it “premature” pending the uncertainty over propofol’s availability.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, called the drug maker’s decision the latest obstacle to a capital punishment procedure that until several years ago had been virtually unchanged for more than three decades.

“States have chosen a medical model. And in general, the medical profession is not involved in things other than life-preserving acts,” he said. “It’s going to be an ongoing problem.”

Hospira, the only other company that distributes propofol in the U.S., has exhausted its supply and doesn’t expect to release the drug for further sale until at least October or November.

Incompetency to Be Executed: Continuing Ethical Challenges & Time for a Change in Texas

September 26, 2012 

Brian D. Shannon


Texas Tech University School of Law

Victor R. Scarano


University of Houston – Health Law & Policy Institute

2012

Texas Tech Law Review, Vol. 45, 2013 
Abstract: 
This Article focuses on a small, but unique group of death row inmates who have largely exhausted their post-conviction procedural rights and have a date set for execution, but while awaiting execution have become incompetent to be executed because of serious mental illness. The United States Supreme Court has determined that it is unconstitutional to execute an individual who is mentally incompetent. The Court has not, however, ruled as to whether it is constitutionally permissible for a state to order a death row inmate to be medicated forcibly for the purpose of restoring that inmate’s competency to allow an execution to proceed. This Article discusses the scope of the serious ethical concerns related to this very challenging scenario, and reviews state and lower federal court decisions that have considered the issue, as well as United States Supreme Court opinions that have considered other, related medication issues concerning offenders with mental disorders. In particular, however, the Article offers and discuss a possible legislative solution that the Texas Legislature could enact that would avoid the thorny ethical and legal issues that are at stake in such cases.

 

Number of Pages in PDF File: 32 download here 

JEL Classification: K19

Kentucky’s execution method questioned

September 26, 2012 http://www.kypost.com

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Two of the three inmates executed in Kentucky since 1976 didn’t contest their fates and went willingly to their deaths. One attorney worries that, under the state’s new proposed lethal injection rules, the inmate’s attorney won’t be notified in time to stop the process if a future volunteer has a change of heart.

Tom Griffiths, a Lexington attorney, was one of 11 people to address a public hearing Tuesday in Frankfort about Kentucky’s proposed execution method. A death row inmate could change his mind in the days or hours leading to an execution but still be put to death if not given the chance to speak to an attorney, Griffiths said.

“It doesn’t allow for any input at all,” Griffiths said.

The hearing was part of the legal process that could allow the state to resume executing inmates by the spring. The Kentucky Justice Cabinet must submit the proposed regulations to the Legislative Research Council by Oct. 15. The regulations then go to legislative committees for consideration. If there are no delays, state officials expect to appear before Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd in February or March to ask him to lift an order barring inmates from being put to death. That order cited problems the judge found with the state’s three-drug lethal injection method.

Kentucky is trying to switch to a method similar to the one used by other states, with either a single dose of the anesthetic sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, a short-acting barbiturate. The state may use two drugs — the anti-seizure medication midazolam, better known as Versed, and hydromorphone, an analgesic known commonly as Dilaudid — if the chemicals used in a single-drug execution are not available seven days in advance.

The state estimates the cost of a single execution under the new process at $81,438. Under the three-drug method, the estimated cost to all the agencies involved was $63,516. The increase appears attributable to rising costs for the services provided by multiple agencies.

Death penalty opponents offered multiple critiques of the proposed method, ranging from access to attorneys to the two-minute time limit a condemned inmate is given to make a final statement. In the last days of a condemned inmate’s life, prison officials restrict access to the inmate, and only prison officials and prosecutors automatically receive legal updates at the prison on the day of an execution.

Public defender Tim Arnold said attorneys need access to phones as well as their clients as the execution nears to discuss legal options, particularly if the inmate opts to stop all appeals.

“We need to have some communication to the clients,” Arnold said.

Mikhail Victor Troutman, a volunteer for the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, described the two-minute time limit as unconscionably short.

“The average bowel movement lasts longer from beginning to end,” Troutman said.

Because the proposed method doesn’t call for the state to wait for a final ruling on a stay of execution, a defense attorney must have a way to notify his client of a court ruling once the process begins, public defender David Barron said.

“What if something occurs during the execution?” Barron said.

While critics dominated the comments, victim advocates and relatives called on executions to begin sooner rather than later.

“We, sir, didn’t get two minutes to say our goodbye,” said Katherine Nichols of Shelbyville, head of Kentuckians’ Voice for Crime Victims, whose brother James Carl Duckett Jr. was slain in a case that remains unsolved.

Beverly Walters of Shepherdsville, who carries a photo of her daughter Patricia Vance, who was killed by death row inmate Randy Haight, wants executions to start quickly.

“I’ll be glad to push his drugs,” Walters told The Associated Press.

TEXAS – Death row inmate contests the drug – Preston Hughes

September 25, 2012 http://www.chron.com

Preston Hughes, who has been on death row for 23 years for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a toddler, is suing the state of Texas over the drug it plans to use to execute him in November, claiming officials are “experimenting” on him and other inmates.

Hughes, 46, is arguing that prison officials, facing a shortage of drugs for the three drug “cocktail” formerly used for lethal injection, did no medical testing before changing the protocol to using a single drug, according to court records.

“They are experimenting on death row inmates because there’s never been any kind of medical review, that we know about, that this is a humane way to carry out their legal function,” said Pat McCann, one of Hughes’ attorneys. “I’m not saying they can’t execute people. I’m saying they ought to give it more thought than the time it takes to play a round of golf.”

Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice declined to comment on the pending lawsuit, but said agency officials examined the execution procedures in other states before changing the procedure.

“The one drug protocol has been adopted by several states and has been upheld as constitutional by the courts,” spokesman Jason Clark said in a statement.

Single, lethal dose

The execution protocol was changed from a three-drug sequence to a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital in July because TDCJ’s stock of the second drug expired and it couldn’t get more.

Anti-death penalty groups have for years been pressuring drug companies, especially in Europe, to stop making or selling drugs used in executions.

Since July, three Texas inmates have been executed using one drug.

No testing

The new procedure, McCann said, was put in to effect without any tests.

“They changed the cocktail, fairly dramatically, because they could get it on sale and stockpile it,” McCann said. “But they’re not doctors and they’re not entitled to experiment on my client.”

He said TDCJ did not seek out opinions from any professional in the medical, psychiatric, or psychological fields about whether the new drug would be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

‘Some merit’

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the lawsuit should be litigated, but is unlikely to stop any executions.

“There is some merit to the claim that it is experimenting,” Dieter said. “In the medical field, you would want experts weighing in on what the best protocol would be.”

However, he said, the standard to get a stay of execution is a high hurdle.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has said you have to show a substantial risk of serious pain, not just allege there may be problems,” Dieter said. “There is some merit to the claim, but it’s an ethical claim. Legally, it may have some trouble.”

Hughes is scheduled to be executed Nov. 15 for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a 3-year-old boy in September 1988.

Girl was raped

Hughes, then 22, was convicted of killing La Shandra Rena Charles, 15, and her cousin, Marcell Lee Taylor, 3, on a dirt trail behind a restaurant in the 2400 block of South Kirkwood.

A medical examiner testified Charles had been raped. Before she died from a stab wound in her throat, Charles was able to tell a police officer that “Preston” did it to her.

When Hughes was arrested, he was on probation for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1985.