The federal court hearing on California's lethal injection procedure ended yesterday. Judge Jeremy Fogel announced that he hopes to issue an opinion in early November. LA Times coverage is here.
The judge has conducted an extensive review of the issue, going so far as to visit the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County to familiarize himself with the process.
Santa Clara University law professor Ellen Kreitzberg, who attended portions of the four-day hearing, said Fogel was truly delving into "the machinery of death."
In response to a question from Fogel, Singler said Friday that the paralytic pancuronium bromide could serve a useful purpose by deepening oxygen deprivation to the brain.
Then the judge asked if an inmate were still conscious after the first drug was administered whether the effect of pancuronium bromide "would conceal that fact" from observers outside the sealed execution chamber. "Yes," Singler said.
Fogel continued to express concern, as he did earlier in the week, that some of the 11 people executed in California by lethal injection were still breathing for several minutes beyond what would be anticipated after the anesthetic was administered.
San Francisco Chronicle coverage is here.
A federal court hearing on the constitutionality of California's lethal injection methods wrapped up Friday after a surprising concession by the state's medical expert that a murderer from San Francisco might have been conscious while he was put to death in 2001.
Dr. Robert Singler, a Napa anesthesiologist, spent two days on the witness stand in San Jose defending the state's newly revised execution procedures against claims by a condemned murderer that flaws in the drug sequence and its implementation could lead to excruciating pain.
Singler said prison doctors were probably observing involuntary-reflex actions when they reported that some inmates appeared to be inhaling and exhaling long after a barbiturate should have stopped their breath at the start of their executions.
But Singler took a step back Friday when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel asked him about one of those inmates, Robert Lee Massie, executed in 2001 for the 1979 murder of a San Francisco liquor store owner.
According to execution logs at San Quentin State Prison, Massie, 59, was injected with the barbiturate sodium pentothal at 12:20 am. on March 27, 2001, and with the paralytic drug pancuronium bromide a minute later, but appeared to be breathing until 12:25 a.m. After two subsequent injections of the heart-stopping chemical potassium chloride, he was pronounced dead at 12:33 a.m.
When Fogel asked about another apparent notation in the record -- that Massie's heart rate rose to 160 beats per minute after the pentothal injection -- Singler said the figure, if accurate, "raises a question of whether or not this inmate was awake. I don't dispute that.''
San Jose Mercury News coverage is here.
Legal experts say Fogel, despite expressing concern in the past about ``micromanaging'' California's execution machinery, will come out with some very specific things he wants the state to do before he'll allow executions to resume. In February, the judge had allowed Morales' execution to proceed if the state put a doctor in the death chamber to monitor the inmate, but state officials couldn't comply. Two anesthesiologists backed out when they determined their medical ethics would be compromised.
During the hearings, Fogel actively questioned witnesses, particularly about whether an inmate could be put to death with a single huge dose of sedatives instead of the three-drug combination favored by 37 of 38 states with the death penalty.
``I see no reason he wouldn't get active this time as well,'' said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and lethal injection expert following the case closely. ``It's a role he's going to have to take on.''
Fogel said Friday that he hopes to have a ruling by early November. Whatever the judge decides, it will be quite some time before the issue is resolved entirely and executions can resume in California. Fogel's ruling is expected to be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and legal experts say the U.S. Supreme Court must ultimately evaluate the lethal injection controversy, whether from California or another state.
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