Today's Miami Herald reports, "Doctors testify on new use of drug in Florida’s lethal injections." It's by Patricia Mazzei.
Last week, a divided Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to temporarily stay Valle’s execution — originally scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday — pending a hearing on the safety and efficacy of the drug, which is sold under the name Nembutal.
That hearing began last week in the courtroom of Circuit Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola, who on Tuesday weighed the dueling opinions of two anesthesiologists.
Dr. David Waisel, who practices at Children’s Hospital in Boston, testified for Valle’s defense that the drug could cause inmates severe pain. Pentobarbital is used as a sedative and for certain patients with seizures or undergoing procedures that could affect the brain, he said, but the drug’s use to knock someone unconscious has not been extensively studied.
“We’re taking a drug that we know everything about, replacing it with a drug that we know almost nothing about,” he said. If the drug doesn’t work as intended, Waisel testified, inmates could feel the third drug in the lethal injection that causes cardiac arrest.
“They would feel the incredibly burning pain of potassium chloride,” he said, describing the possibility as a “probably hellish” experience.
The prosecution’s expert, Dr. Mark Dershwitz of the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center, countered that the state’s lethal-injection dose of pentobarbital — five grams — is so large that it would cause the inmate’s breathing to become erratic, blood pressure to slow dramatically and brain activity to diminish.
“This dose is far in excess of any dose that would be used on a human that I can think of,” he said, testifying via video conference.
Would the dose be lethal? asked Ken Nunnelley, a senior assistant attorney general.
“Definitely,” Dershwitz said.
"Execution drug could cause pain," doctor says," is the AP report, via Fort Myers News-Press.
A doctor testifying for a death row inmate convicted of killing a police officer 33 years ago told a judge Tuesday Florida’s planned use of a replacement drug for lethal injections could cause extreme pain in executions.
Dr. David Waisel, anesthesiologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, said the drug pentobarbital commonly sold as Nembutal, hasn’t been sufficiently tested to ensure an inmate is unconscious before two other deadly drugs are administered. States are using pentobarbital because the sole U.S. manufacturer stopped making the previous widely-used drug, sodium thiopental.
Waisel said use of pentobarbital “exposes the inmate to extraordinary risk” compared with the old drug. He said pentobarbital is most commonly used as a sedative and its effectiveness in rendering a person unconscious is not well known.
And:
The state’s medical expert, Dr. Mark Dershwitz, said the level of pentobarbital to be used in Florida’s execution protocol was enough to kill by itself and would easily induce a coma.
He also said the planned 5-gram dosage level would stop breathing, reduce blood pressure and cut brain activity.
Asked if it would be lethal, Dershwitz, anesthesiologist at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center, replied: “Definitely.”
The Supreme Court gave Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola until Friday to issue a ruling, which will then be reviewed by the high court.
Earlier coverage of the Florida hearing on the state's lethal inection protocol begins at the link.
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