National Update: Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Nevada and Virginia stay executions

The past week has once again included numerous stayed and postponed executions across the nation. Georgia and Texas each stayed two, while Alabama, Nevada and Virginia each halted one execution--for a variety of reasons, the most frequent being the pending challenge to lethal injection.

Expand this post below to see a listing of the dates of each stay, with links to news articles relating the full stories.

10/24 - The scheduled execution of Daniel Siebert in Alabama was stayed by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals: Execution of Ill Alabama Inmate Blocked (source: The Associated Press)

10/23 - Georgia stays two executions in four days: Top Court in Georgia Again Delays Execution (source: The New York Times)

10/18 - Two executions in Texas postponed: Two Executions Halted Over Challenges (source: The Associated Press)

10/18 - Virginia halts execution, raising more questions about national state of the death penalty: Supreme Court Halts Va. Inmate's Execution (source: The Washington Post)

10/17 - Nevada becomes the fifth state to stay an execution since Sept. 25: Court Stays Execution in Nevada (source: The New York Times)

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Lethal Injection: Recent developments

A number of developments have occurred in the last week, following the Sept. 26 decision of the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to lethal injection sometime this winter. Below, starting with the most recent, is a review of the big decisions and stays-of-execution:

Oct. 4: Oklahoma’s attorney general asked the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals not to set any execution dates until the United States Supreme Court ruled on a challenge to the lethal injection method.

Oct. 2: The Texas Court of Appeals stayed the execution of Heliberto Chi, pending the decision by the US Supreme Court on lethal injection. Some legal experts in Texas view the decision by Texas' highest appeals court and the issues it raised as an indefinite halting of all executions in the state, though Texas officials claim they plan to proceed. See the New York Times for more.

Sept. 28: The US Supreme Court granted a rare stay of execution to a Texas inmate, Carlton Turner, Jr., who had appealed to the Court due to the pending lethal injection hearing. According to the New York Times, "The decision suggests that until it issues a ruling on lethal injection, the court may be receptive to requests to delay such executions, at least for defendants whose cases raise no procedural issues."

Sept. 28: Another rare stay of an execution by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, who said the state would not execute inmate Tommy Arthur, while it came up with a new formula for lethal injection. State officials said they wanted to make sure prisoners were completely unconscious before they were killed--an issue that has been problematic in recent months and has temporarily halted executions in several states, including Florida.

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Judicial Update: Supreme Court to hear lethal injection challenge

On Sept. 26, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by two Kentucky death row inmates, who claim that lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and is therefore unconstitutional under the 8th amendment.

Current challenges to lethal injection have effectively stopped executions in a growing number of states, including California, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

37 of the 38 death penalty states all use lethal injection (except Nebraska, which still uses the electric chair).

According to the New York Times, "Lethal injection was adopted in the 1980s as a more palatable alternative to electrocution, but it has proven increasingly troublesome. Leading medical organizations have told their members not to participate, and lawyers for death-row inmates have produced evidence showing that in the absence of expert medical attention, there is a substantial risk of error in administering the combination of anesthesia and paralyzing drugs necessary to bring about a quick and painless death."

The Times also reports, "The Supreme Court case will be argued in January or February and decided by early next summer. While it is pending, judges around the country are certain to be asked to bar executions in those states that are not already under an official or de facto moratorium."

Read the Sept. 26 piece, "Justices to Enter the Debate Over Lethal Injection," for more and continue to check this site for updates.

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Secrecy Upheld in the Execution Process, Despite Mistakes

In a July 30 article, "After Flawed Executions, States Resort to Secrecy,"* New York Times legal columnist Adam Liptak examines the shift toward protecting the identity of those involved in the execution process in several states. Ironically, this comes at a time when botched executions are increasingly reported. Amidst growing awareness of the incompetence of those performing lethal injection procedures, citizens are left with no one to hold accountable when the identity of involved officials is withheld.

Liptak writes:
"In the wake of several botched executions around the nation, often performed by poorly trained workers, you might think that we would want to know more, not less, about the government employees charged with delivering death on behalf of the state.

But corrections officials say that executioners will face harassment or worse if their identities are revealed, and that it is getting hard to attract medically trained people to administer lethal injections, in part because codes of medical ethics prohibit participation in executions."

In Missouri, for example, a doctor who "had supervised more than 50 executions by lethal injection testified last year that he sometimes gave condemned inmates smaller doses of a sedative than the state’s protocol called for, explaining that he is dyslexic."

The doctor had his right to practice revoked by two hospitals following numerous malpractice suits. In September of last year, a federal judge barred him from participating “in any manner, at any level, in the State of Missouri’s lethal injection process.”

However, the Louisiana state legislature has acted to nullify this ruling. Liptak explains:
"A new law, signed this month by Gov. Matt Blunt, makes it unlawful to reveal 'the identity of a current or former member of an execution team,' and it allows executioners to sue anyone who names them.
The governor explained that the law 'will protect those Missourians who assist in fulfilling the state’s execution process.' "

The new Missouri law even bars medical licensing boards from taking disciplinary actions against doctors or nurses who participate in executions (contrary to the stance of prominent medical organizations, including the American Medical Association).

Liptak also points to recent developments regarding flawed lethal injections procedures in Florida, where a judge ruled a week ago that procedures issued by Florida’s corrections department in May (that there is only one job requirement to be an executioner: you must be “a person 18 years or older who is selected by the warden to initiate the flow of lethal chemicals into the inmate") is inacceptable. The judge halted a pending execution, declaring that the system must include experienced and competent people before it can be allowed to carry out death sentences.

Liptak asserts:
"It would be good to know more about who is performing executions in Florida. But that state’s law, like Missouri’s, forbids the disclosure of 'information which identifies an executioner.' Quite a few states have similar laws, and a new Virginia law shielding executioners came into effect this month.

This is a serious issue to examine and monitor as lethal injection procedures continue to be analyzed across the country. Does the public have right to know who is carrying out executions and if these officials have the medical competence to do so? Or does the protection of the executioner outweigh concerns about cruel and unusual punishment, and the effective torture that can be the result of a botched dosage or otherwise flawed injection.
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*Article accessible to Times Select members only.

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Execution Date Set for Indiana Inmate David Woods

This past week, the Indiana Supreme Court set an execution date of May 4 for David Leon Woods. Woods was sentenced in March of 1985 for the lethal stabbing of Juan Placenia, his 77 year old neighbor in Garrett, Indiana. Woods was 19 years old at the time of the murder and has now been on death row for 22 years. Woods has filed a motion to join a suit begun by Norman Timberlake which challenges the legitimacy and legality of lethal injection. Woods' attorney, William Van Der Pol, Jr. "...contends the Supreme Court erred..." regarding Wood's eligibility for death, citing mental retardation as a reason for Woods' exemption.

ND ASK will be organizing a vigil to be held at Michigan City the night of the execution as well as demonstration in South Bend and petitions to suspend the use of the death penalty in Indiana, citing fundamental errors in the process.

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State of the states

The downward trend of convictions and executions, coupled with recent investigations into the use of the death penalty on a state by state basis and ensuing moratoriums, makes it clear that the death penalty is on the way out. Tennessee's governor recently halted executions for a 30-day period (which has turned up such blatant and absurd examples of negligence such as portions of electrocution procedures incorrectly copied and pasted into the new lethal injection manual) following Florida's botched execution in December during which it took the inmate 30 minutes to die. The House of Representatives in both New Mexico and Colorado have furthered bills to abolish capital punishment outright and a similar repeal bill has made it out of committee in Nebraska.

I'll say it again, the death penalty is on the way out.

With such developments across the country, we can only hope that tomorrow's announcement of the ABA's recommendation to establish a moratorium here in Indiana takes hold. The national political and social climate is just right for this report to resonate all the way to the Governor and the legislature, resulting in the implementation of the recommended moratorium.

Ultimately, however, the report will not speak for itself. While it will contain painstakingly researched and interpreted data, it is up to us to take those facts and the report's recommendations straight to the top. We urge everyone to take the initiative to further this cause in whatever way they can. Whether it be a simple conversation with a friend about death penalty issues or a letter to the editor, any means of expanding knowledge about the death penalty's inherent flaws should be utilized until it is no longer an obtrusive stain on the fabric of our society.

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New York Times Magazine Examines Lethal Injection

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine will feature an examination of lethal injection across America entitled The Needle and the Damage Done. It is already available online and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. It is incredibly in-depth and provides an incredible insight as to just what this process of systematically killing people entails. Many of the details discussed in the article are rather disturbing but help shed some light on just how broken the death penalty system is in general as well as lethal injection specifically.

A few excerpts:

"For instance, Doerhoff testified that executions in Missouri have taken place in the dark, an execution team working by flashlight, and that the execution team consists of 'nonmedical people.' For most, the day of the execution is 'the first time probably in their life they have picked up a syringe... so it's a little stressful for them to be doing this.'"

"Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University Law School, says that what she thinks of as America’s deep ambivalence about capital punishment — our inability to do away with it or to think very hard about it — has meant that Chapman’s story, that of one man making a small and modestly considered proposal that then persists over time, is not unique... She found that many states made errors when creating their own protocols by using drugs that Chapman originally suggested. As Denno wrote in 2002 in The Ohio State Law Journal, 'One of the most striking aspects of studying lethal-injection protocols concerns the sheer difficulty involved in acquiring' those protocols. She found that only one-quarter of the states that used lethal injection specified the quantities of the drugs to be injected."

The story goes on to articulate numerous inconsistencies with procedures and also includes opinions from those who still favor the use of the death penalty and lethal injection.

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