"Missouri Supreme Court declines to set execution dates for 6 killers," is the AP report, via KMOV-TV.
The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to set execution dates for six condemned killers, saying doing so is “premature” until the courts decide if Missouri’s new execution method is constitutional.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster asked the court to set the execution dates May, the same month the Missouri Department of Corrections adopted a new execution protocol that uses a single drug, propofol.
“Until the parties promptly resolve the issue of the use of propofol as contemplated by the department of corrections’ protocol, ruling on the motion to set execution date is premature,” the court ruling stated Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court declined to elaborate.
Koster called it disappointing.
And:
States have scrambled to find substitutes. Other states have gone to single-drug methods, but Missouri is the first to turn to propofol, an anesthetic.
Cheryl Pilate, an attorney for Smulls, wrote in a filing to the Supreme Court this spring that propofol has been known to cause extreme pain in some patients, even in normal doses. She wrote that the Missouri plan calls for a dose 15 times greater than normal, potentially increasing the risk of pain and suffering. St. Louis attorney Richard Sindel made a similar argument on behalf of Barnett.
Missouri executed 66 men between 1989 and 2005, but has executed just two since, as courts have weighed constitutional challenges to the death penalty. There are 46 men on death row.
Today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, "Missouri execution dates postponed because of suit over new drug." It's by Robert Patrick. Here's an extended excerpt's from the Post-Dispatch's extensive coverage:
Twenty-one men on death row — including six who may be next in line to die — say in a lawsuit that Missouri’s new lethal injection drug is unconstitutionally cruel and could force them to spend their final moments screaming in pain.
The latest challenge to the state’s long-troubled injection protocol caused the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday to postpone the setting of execution dates for the six, saying it would be premature with the case pending. Four of them were convicted in the St. Louis area.
At issue is Missouri’s plan to replace its three-drug execution cocktail of the past with just propofol, an anesthetic made famous when an overdose of it killed superstar Michael Jackson. The propofol would follow a non-lethal dose of lidocaine, a local anesthetic, intended to buffer potential pain.
Some others states with the death penalty also have switched to using a single drug, but none uses propofol. Illinois administered the traditional cocktail of three separately lethal drugs until it abolished capital punishment last year.
The suit was filed in June after news leaked out the month before about the Department of Corrections’ change.
"It’s an excuse to delay and, from their perspective, someday hopefully abolish the death penalty," St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch told the Post-Dispatch in an interview Monday, before the Supreme Court announcement. "And its a specious argument."
But Rick Sindel, a lawyer representing four of the plaintiffs, said the state’s own expert admitted in court that propofol could cause "excruciating pain."
"That’s probably why propofol has never been used in any other country or any other state to induce death," Sindel said in an interview.
He complained that the Department of Corrections and attorney general’s office "surreptitiously" hatched the plan without regard for pain.
The lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court and moved this month on the state’s motion to federal court in Jefferson City, asks that a judge halt lethal injections. State lawyers asked last week for a dismissal, saying the case raises no new issues.
And:
It’s also not clear whether propofol will be available for that purpose. In response to questions from the Post-Dispatch, one manufacturer, Fresenius Kabi, said it will not accept orders from prison systems and is "currently examining whether there may be possibilities to more tightly control access to Propofol in the United States, in order to effectively prevent it from being used for purposes other than the approved medical indications."
The inmates’ chief argument is that propofol would cause the "unprecedented, substantial likelihood of foreseeable infliction of excruciating pain," violating their rights with cruel and unusual suffering.
Sindel said that 60 to 70 percent of medical patients receiving propofol report pain. For some, "pain is excruciating, causing them to cry out and struggle vigorously," or "scream at the top of their lungs," the suit alleges.
"Missouri Supreme Court won’t set execution dates," by Jason Hancock for the Kansas City Star.
The Missouri Supreme Court declined Tuesday to set execution dates for six inmates currently sitting on death row until a legal dispute over the state's execution method can be resolved.
Earlier this year Missouri stopped using its longstanding three-drug method for executions in favor of a single-dose drug called propofol.
Propofol has never previously been used as an execution drug, prompting concerns that it could result in pain and suffering for the condemned. A lawsuit currently pending in Cole County court contends the use of propofol violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Until the legal questions are answered, "ruling on the motion to set execution date is premature," the court ruled Tuesday.
Only two men have been executed in Missouri since 2005. Earlier this year, Attorney General Chris Koster asked the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for 19 death row inmates. The request came shortly after the state changed its lethal injection protocol due to a national shortage of sodium thiopental, the first part of the three-drug execution method.
KWMU-FM, St. Louis Public Radio, reports, "Mo. Supreme Court will wait to set execution dates for six inmates, by Rachel Lippmann and Maria Altman.
The Missouri Supreme Court will not set execution dates for six death row inmates until a court case over the state's new execution protocol is resolved.
The state Department of Corrections announced on May 15 that it was switching from the standard three-drug cocktail to a protocol that used just one drug - the anesthetic propofol. Two days later, attorney general Chris Koster asked the state to set execution dates for 19 inmates. In June, that new protocol was challenged on 8th Amendment grounds.
The state high court today ordered the Department of Corrections to wait until that case is decided before scheduling any executions. Here is the full text of the order:
"The Court has received notice of Zink v. Lombardi, Case No. 12AC-CC00396, currently pending in the Cole County circuit court,which contests the execution protocol adopted by the department of corrections on May 15, 2012. The petition in that case raises issues, among others, concerning whether the newly adopted protocol violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, particularly in light of the protocol's requirement that propofol be administered to cause the death of the offender. Until the parties promptly resolve the issue of the use of propofol as contemplated by the department of corrections' protocol, ruling on the motion to set execution date is premature."Attorney John William Simon represents 19 inmates who filed suit, including the six men whose execution dates were the subject of today’s ruling.
Simon says the drug is known to cause pain when administered.
“Historically the United States has moved from more painful forms of execution to less painful forms,” Simon said. “The new protocol that we are challenging is a backward step. It is going from the electric chair to burning at the stake.”
Earlier coverage of Missouri's lethal injection drug switch begins at the link. Related posts are in the lethal injection index.
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