Virginia Senate OKs use of electric chair amid drug shortage
Source: Associated Press
Virginia Senate OKs use of electric chair amid drug shortage
Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press
Updated 2:25 pm, Monday, March 7, 2016
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia would be allowed to force condemned inmates to die in the electric chair under a bill the state Senate approved Monday as a response to the nationwide shortage of lethal-injection drugs.
Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, which set off a passionate debate in the General Assembly. The bill won approval with a 22-17 vote in the Senate, meaning it doesn't appear to have enough support to survive a veto if it's spiked by McAuliffe.
Like many states, Virginia has struggled to obtain lethal-injection drugs in recent years because drug companies have protested their use in executions. The short supply of the drugs has forced several states to pass or consider laws to bring back other methods of executions, such as electrocution and firing squads.
Supporters of the bill say death penalty foes are forcing the state's hand by making it more difficult to obtain lethal injections. But opponents say forcing inmates into the electric chair will actually undermine the state's death penalty by putting the constitutionality of the law at risk.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Virginia-Senate-OKs-use-of-electric-chair-amid-6875238.php
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1997
Flames Leap From Inmate’s Head At Execution Window Opened To Clear Smoke; ‘Old Sparky’ Called A Deterrent
By Mike Clary Special To The Los Angeles Times
The perennial American debate over the cruelty and value of the death penalty began anew here Tuesday after a gruesome electric chair execution in which flames leaped from the head of a convicted murderer as the switch was thrown. Pedro Medina, a 39-year-old Cuban immigrant, was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., but not before a prison official wearing protective gloves helped douse the flames which shot from the condemned man’s head, and so much smoke filled the death chamber that a window to the outside was opened.
“It was horrible. A solid flame covered his whole head, from one side to the other. I had the impression of somebody being burned alive,” said attorney Mike Minerva of the state’s Capital Collateral Representative, which represents death row inmates, including Medina. “In fact, you could smell it on the other side of the glass. Very strong.”
While opponents of capital punishment quickly cited Medina’s fiery death as graphic evidence of the barbarity of execution, state Attorney General Bob Butterworth said he hoped the prisoner’s final seconds would serve as a deterrent to others.
“People who wish to commit murder, they better not do it in the state of Florida because we may have a problem with our electric chair,” Butterworth said.
More:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/mar/26/flames-leap-from-inmates-head-at-execution-window/
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Attorney General of Florida during "Old Sparky", Bob Butterworth.
Pedro Medina, before execution
graphic evidence of what the hell happened to Pedro Medina:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1587&bih=700&q=Pedro+Medina+florida+Cuban&oq=Pedro+Medina+florida+Cuban&gs_l=img.3...564.9378.0.9819.15.4.0.11.0.0.113.402.3j1.4.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.3.300.LF72-QKkrSc#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=Pedro+Medina+Old+Sparky [/center]
Final Hours? Medina Set For Execution
Vigil for condemned killer
Condemned Killer's Lawyers Hoping For Last-minute Stay
March 25, 1997|By Michael Griffin, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
STARKE — As lawyers battled for his life in Atlanta and Washington on Monday, Pedro Medina awaited his date with Florida's electric chair for the 1982 murder of an Orlando schoolteacher.
Hoping to be at Medina's side today during the long hours before the scheduled 7 a.m. execution was the Rev. Glenn Dickson, a Gainesville minister whom the Cuban immigrant picked out of the Yellow Pages two years ago.
''I've prayed with Pedro once a month since he called me,'' Dixon said Monday. ''I've told him I'll be with him up until the very end.''
. . .
Medina was convicted of killing his former neighbor, 52-year-old elementary school coach Dorothy James. He was seen at James' apartment complex the night of the stabbing and was found afterward at a North Florida rest stop, asleep in her Cadillac. Prosecutors said evidence in the apartment also linked him to the death.
Medina, who was released from a Cuban mental institution before coming to the United States in 1980, claimed James was his girlfriend and that he loved her too much to kill her.
But a few days before, Medina's state lawyers invoked a rarely used state law banning the execution of people who don't understand they're going to die in the electric chair or why they're being executed. The lawyers said Medina had carried on conversations with dead people - including physicist Albert Einstein - and often faded in and out of reality.
One of James' daughters and McClain, a lawyer with the Office of Capital Collateral Representative, contend that the police did not look hard enough at other suspects and withheld evidence that could have spared Medina's life.
. . .
Pope John Paul II has appealed to Chiles to spare Medina. A Presbyterian congregation was praying for him Monday in Cape May, N.J., where Medina settled briefly after his arrival in the United States.
More:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1997-03-25/news/9703250266_1_medina-supreme-court-albert-einstein
