Ricky Gray becomes 112th person executed in Virginia
by Kristen Whitney Daniels | Jan. 24, 2017
The execution of Rick Javon Gray Jan. 18 seems to add to the list "botched" lethal injections involving the drug midazolam.
Gray, the 112th person executed in the state of Virginia since 1976, was pronounced dead at 9:42 p.m., some 48 minutes after officials tried starting his IV line for the three drugs, including a compounded formula of midazolam, used to execute him.
Frank Green, a reporter from the Richmond-Times Dispatch, stated that the injection appeared to take an "inordinately long time" to complete the execution. Gray spent 33 minutes behind a curtain reportedly due to difficulties with the IV line. Gray's lawyers said that he experienced "labored breathing, gasping, snoring, and other audible and visible activity" during the execution.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant Gray an emergency stay of execution, an action his lawyers had sought, pending the outcome of a case they had filed in December that challenges Virginia's usage of a compounded formula of midazolam as part of a three-drug protocol for lethal injection. Gray's legal team claimed that the drug would violate his Eighth Amendment right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment.
https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/ricky-gray-becomes-112th-person-executed-virginia
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