10/02/06 (US): California's Executions Procedure Attacked
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A challenge under the Constitution has been made in California that the State’s executions procedure by lethal injection is haphazard, amateurish and with little medical oversight.
"Operational Procedure No. 770," the State's name for execution by lethal injection, is performed in a dark, cramped room by men and women who know little, if anything, about the deadly drugs they inject under extreme stress. A number of experts also gave evidence about how they believed the drugs, in some cases at least, inflicted pain and suffering upon the prisoner, possibly amounting to ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ in violation of the Constitution.
Thousands of pages of depositions and four days of testimony last week in a federal courtroom provided the most intimate portrait yet of a state's lethal injection methods.
Witnesses depicted executions by lethal injection — long considered a more humane alternative to the gas chamber or the electric chair — as almost haphazard events, and medical experts on both sides could not rule out the possibility that one or more inmates had been conscious and experienced an excruciating sensation of drowning or strangulation before death.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who presided over the trial here, is now reviewing the testimony and records to determine if the state can continue to perform lethal injection executions or if it should revise procedures. The litigation was brought by Michael Morales, condemned for the 1981 murder of Terri Winchell, 17, a high school student .
Morales, like inmates in several other states who have also challenged lethal injection, claims prisoners may not be anesthetized properly before receiving a muscle-paralyzing drug that would mask any suffering before a third, heart-stopping chemical kills them. His witnesses insisted that trained medical personnel are needed to ensure a humane execution.
The testimony of duelling doctors and pharmacologists underscored the incongruity of using a medical procedure to produce a decidedly non-medical result.
Lawyers for the state defended the work of the executioners, stressing it was much less complicated than medicine. An execution, after all, is supposed to be punishment, the attorneys reminded the court.
All California executions take place at San Quentin prison north of San Francisco. The condemned is strapped on a gurney in a small, mint-green room that for decades served as the gas chamber. After the IVs are set up, the chamber's heavy, solid steel door is shut and locked, and the inmate is left alone. A prison employee leans into the door to seal it, an apparent holdover from the days when the prison had to ensure toxic gas would not escape. The execution team retires to an adjacent room, where members insert the execution drugs by syringe into IV lines that run through the wall and into the inmate's arms.
To prevent the executioners from being seen or identified by witnesses, their room is illuminated only by a red light. A doctor who filled out execution records said the room was so dark he had to use a flashlight to see what he was writing. The IV bags hang from ducts so high that it would be impossible to determine if everything was working properly, testified Dr. Mark Heath, a Columbia University anesthesiologist and expert witness for Morales. A member of the execution team said in a deposition that she believed "the janitor" helped set the bags.
The judgment is due within the next month.
© X-Pro 2006
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