"Lawyers fighting Arizona death-row inmate's upcoming execution," is the AP report by Amanda Lee Myers. It's via the Republic.
Lawyers for an Arizona death-row inmate are fighting his upcoming execution, arguing in one filing that three newly appointed clemency board members are unprepared to consider his arguments for mercy and in another, that the state Department of Corrections is violating his constitutional rights.
Samuel Villegas Lopez's attorneys filed the first request with the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, often a death-row inmate's last chance to argue that they don't deserve to be executed.
Lopez, 49, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on May 16 at the state prison in Florence in what would be the fourth execution in Arizona this year.
In the Tuesday filing, attorney Kelley Henry argues to the clemency board to recommend delaying Lopez's execution so that three newly appointed board members, including its chairman, can get additional training on considering death-penalty cases.
Gov. Jan Brewer overhauled the five-member board last month, replacing two voting members and longtime Chairman Duane Belcher with three new people in what some defense attorneys and anti-death penalty advocates said was a political move.
In his filing, Henry cites an Arizona law that says each new board member must undergo a four-week course before beginning their new duties.
"Indeed it appears that if the newly appointed board members were to vote on Sammy Lopez's application, such vote would be in violation of the statute," according to the filing. "This board should not sit in judgment on Sammy Lopez's very life without proper training and preparation."
And:
The board is expected to consider Henry's request on Monday at a hearing in Florence. Lopez is expected to attend.
In a separate filing in federal court also Tuesday, Lopez's attorneys ask that his execution be put on hold because the Arizona Department of Corrections has continuously violated and changed its own written protocol for executing death-row inmates.
Attorneys argue that a new execution protocol released in January loosened requirements for those who inject inmates with lethal drugs and gives far too much discretion to corrections Director Charles Ryan to make last-minute changes.
Today's Arizona Republic reports, "Halt to execution sought over inconsistent procedures." It's by Michael Kiefer.
Attorneys for an Arizona prisoner who is scheduled to die later this month on Tuesday asked for a preliminary injunction against his execution because the state Department of Corrections repeatedly varies from its own policies in carrying out death sentences.
Samuel Lopez is scheduled to be executed on May 16 for the murder of a Phoenix woman in 1987.
Similar arguments were knocked down in U.S. District Court last December and again in February. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in on the February case and put Corrections Department lawyers on notice, though the court allowed two executions to go forward. A third execution since then was carried out in April.
The argument has swirled since 2007, when the Department of Corrections and attorneys representing prisoners began hammering out a protocol for executions. Tuesday's filing claims that the protocol has been changed numerous times, most recently in January, and that the department has not been able to adhere to it.
In February, for example, the department switched from a three-drug to a one-drug protocol two days before an execution because it discovered that one of the other required drugs had passed its expiration date. In March, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had illegally allowed Arizona and other states to import death-penalty drugs from England in 2010 and 2011.
Among the ongoing issues have been the backgrounds and qualifications of the medical staff who perform the executions, and their repeated use of a catheter that is surgically implanted in an artery in the prisoner's groin.
"I'm astounded that Arizona is the only state that has to perform surgery to carry out an execution," said Assistant Federal Public Defender Dale Baich.
In a memorandum accompanying Tuesday's motion for preliminary injunction, Baich noted that the so-called femoral catheter was used in the February execution of Robert Towery and the April execution of Thomas Kemp, even though autopsies showed that both men had suitable veins for easy catheter insertion in their arms.
Towery, the memorandum said, was stuck 11 times in his arms, wrist and groin before the execution doctor succeeded in inserting a catheter in his groin.
Earlier coverage of Arizona clemency and lethal injection issues begins at the links.
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