State secrecy clouds supreme court case

[struggle4progress]

By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
5:20 PM PST, January 6, 2008

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- The legal battle over lethal injection, which comes before the Supreme Court on Monday, has been conducted in unusual secrecy, with courts permitting states across the country to keep from lawyers and the public precisely how death row inmates are executed ...

In the Kentucky case, David Barron of the state Department of Public Advocacy, who represents death row inmates Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., was not allowed to question the execution team. Barron's copy of the state's written instructions for lethal injection executions was redacted. The unredacted version was submitted to the Supreme Court under seal ...

In Texas, which conducted the nation's first lethal injection execution in 1982, lawyers only recently were allowed to depose the warden in charge of death row inmates. They still have not been allowed to question any member of the execution team ...

Heather McDevitt, the attorney for Alabama death row inmate Willie McNair said that .... The state fought "tooth and nail" to stop lawyers from questioning executioners, even with an agreement to keep them anonymous ...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-secrecy7jan07,0,3586084.story?coll=la-home-center

[GodlessBiker]

1. Go ahead...ask me some questions...

[LaStrega]

2. secrecy ... sure has become the norm

under shrub and his cronies

[DBoon]

3. Of course they can't let this become public

If we admitted how brutal our executions were, we could not justify any other state-sanctioned torture!

[rug]

4. Why the secrecy? Are they turning them into green wafers?

[Solly Mack]

5. disgusting

[flashl]

6. US death penalty injection do not meet vet standards for putting down animals

Execution by Lethal Injection Is Not Humane or Painless

Prisoners executed by lethal injection in the US may have experienced awareness and unnecessary suffering because they were not properly sedated, concluded a research letter in last week's issue of The Lancet. The authors believe the use of lethal injection should cease in order to prevent unnecessary cruelty and a public review into anaesthesia procedures during executions is necessary.

...

Lethal injection generally consists of the sequential administration of sodium thiopental for anaesthesia, pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart and cause death. Without anaesthesia the person would experience suffocation and excruciating pain without being able to move.

...

Leonidas Koniaris (University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, USA) and colleagues analysed protocol information from the states of Texas and Virginia, where around 45% of executions are done. They found that executioners-typically one to three emergency medical technicians or medical corpsmen*-had no training in anaesthesia, drugs were administered remotely with no monitoring of anaesthesia and there were no data collection, documentation of anaesthesia, or post-procedure peer review. They also noted that neither state had a record of the creation of its protocol. The investigators also analysed data from autopsy toxicology reports from 49 executions in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. They found that concentrations of thiopental in the blood were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of the 49 executions; 21 inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness. The study suggests that the current practice of lethal injection for execution fails to even meet veterinary standards for putting down animals.

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