During last year's federal trial examining lethal injection procedures in Missouri, we learned that the doctor who supervised executions was dyslexic and changed drug amounts without informing state officials. Later, when his identity was revealed, we found that he also had disciplinary problems that limited his work in certain hospitals.
The Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, "Execution nurse had criminal past." Post-Dispatch reporter Jeremy Kohler wrote the story.
Before a Missouri executioner could go to Indiana in 2001 to help federal authorities put mass killer Timothy McVeigh to death, he had to take care of one detail:
He needed permission from his probation officer to leave the state.
The request, by a licensed practical nurse from Farmington, set off alarms within the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole. At least one supervisor spoke out to an agency administrator.
"As I stated to you previously, it seems bizarre to me that we would knowingly allow an offender, on active supervision, to participate in the execution process at any level," she wrote.
But that memo and others obtained by the Post-Dispatch show that high-level federal and state corrections officials did let the nurse make the trip — and continue to work on Missouri's lethal-injection team.
The use of someone with such legal troubles — two felonies plea-bargained down to misdemeanors for stalking and tampering with property — raises further questions about the expertise and backgrounds of the people the government entrusts to carry out the ultimate punishment.
That punishment is already on hold in 35 states and in the federal system while the U.S. Supreme Court considers arguments in a Kentucky lethal-injection case. Lawyers for the condemned say the process is open to mistakes that could inflict extreme pain, in violation of the Eighth Amendment protection from cruel or unusual punishment.
The nurse is David L. Pinkley.
The memos obtained by the Post-Dispatch say state and federal officials were aware of Pinkley's conviction and probation status and wanted to use him anyway.
The probation division supervisor who raised concerns, in the February 2001 memo, wrote that when Pinkley first asked to travel to the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute in June 2000, he showed her a business card from the penitentiary's warden, Harley G. Lappin.
The supervisor wrote that she called the federal prison and told an acting warden about Pinkley's probation status and "he seemed alarmed, and informed me he secured the services of this individual, as recommended by authorities at Potosi Correctional Center. ..."
She also told the warden at Potosi, then home of the Missouri execution chamber, who, she said, "seemed alarmed, not knowing the offender was on supervision."
When she checked Pinkley's file in January 2001, the supervisor wrote, she learned that he already had been approved for five trips to Indiana the previous year.
In an April 2001 memo, the administrator wrote that Pinkley's request had been reviewed all the way up through Dora Schriro, then director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, and that "federal authorities have apparently done the same thing."
The paperwork reflects Pinkley's explanation that he would be administering McVeigh's lethal injection. It is not clear whether he did, although his permits to travel to the Indiana prison included May 30 to June 30, 2001; McVeigh was executed that June 11.
The Kansas City Star carries an AP report, "Nurse with criminal record worked on Missouri executions."
A Missouri executioner was allowed to carry out his work even though he had a criminal record of his own.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sunday that the nurse even joined a federal team that executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, even though the nurse’s superiors knew he was on probation.
Before McVeigh’s 2001 execution, the Missouri nurse had to get his probation officer’s permission to travel to Indiana as part of the execution team. That request led at least one supervisor to write to an administrator with the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole.
“As I stated to you previously, it seems bizarre to me that we would knowingly allow an offender, on active supervision, to participate in the execution process at any level,” the supervisor wrote in a memo obtained by the Post-Dispatch.
That memo and other documents show that federal and state corrections officials allowed the nurse to work on Missouri’s lethal-injection team, although the Post-Dispatch said it is not clear whether the nurse actually attended McVeigh’s execution.
The nurse’s criminal background — he had pleaded no contest to misdemeanors of stalking and tampering with evidence — raises further questions about those who carry out capital punishment.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that Dr. Alan Doerhoff of Jefferson City could not participate in Missouri’s lethal injection process because of concerns about the surgeon’s dyslexia and lack of expertise.
The Post-Dispatch's STLToday website has, "Is it important to know the background of execution team members?" by editor Kurt Greenbaum.
In a Post-Dispatch story out today, we reveal that a member of the death-row execution team for the Missouri and the federal prison system has a criminal past. In fact, the licensed practical nurse from Farmington had to get special permission from top state and federal prison officials to travel to the lethal-injection execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh because at the time he was on supervised probation as a convicted stalker.
The nurse had pleaded no contest in St. Francois County to misdemeanor counts of stalking and tampering with property of a man who had a relationship with the nurse’s estranged wife. He paid the victim $750 and was ordered to serve two years of supervised probation.
The Post-Dispatch article comes at a time that the entire process of lethal-injection executions — from how they are perfomed to the training and backgrounds of those who are performing them — are under increasing scrutiny. In fact, such executions are on hold in about three-dozen states and the federal system as they await a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in a Kentucky case that alleges the current lethal injection process can cause cruel or unusual punishment to inmates.
Today’s story is the second time the Post-Dispatch has revealed the name of a member of Missouri’s execution team. In July 2006, we reported the name and background of a doctor who had been involved in state executions.
That came after a federal judge in Kansas City had suspended the state’s lethal-injection executions. The judge did so out of concern about the doctor’s qualifications and methods, and out of concern that the state couldn’t guarantee it wasn’t delivering unconstitutionally cruel punishment in its death chamber.
You can track coverage of the Missouri lethal injection litigation beginning with this post.
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