The StandDown Texas Project

U.S. Execution, European Abolition

That's the title of a New York Times OpEd by Sylvie Kauffmann.  It will appear in tomorrow's print edition.  Kauffmann is the editorial director Le Monde.  Here's the beginning:

When Felix G. Rohatyn went to Paris as the American ambassador in 1997, he expected the most controversial subject he’d face to be the famous French mistrust of “American hegemony.” To his surprise, the No. 1 issue turned out to be the death penalty.

The “enormous revulsion of the French” over the issue, he told me in 2001 after his return to New York, was eye-opening, as was his friendship with Robert Badinter, the French minister of justice who, under President François Mitterrand, led the fight for the abolition of capital punishment in 1981.

“All those demonstrations, in front of the embassy and the consulates, showed how really passionate people were,” Mr. Rohatyn said. “And in the end, I thought they were probably right.”

Two recent magazine articles — one French, the other American — demonstrate that while the issue has not gone away in Paris, it has taken a new turn in the United States. There has been a big change in American attitudes toward capital punishment during the last decade, and Europe has played a part in it.

The American magazine article is Pamela Colloff's Texas Monthly article on former TDCJ spokeswoman Michelle Lyons.

Related posts are in the international and silent actor trauma category indexes.

Pope Calls for Abolition of Death Penalty & Life Sentences

"Pope Francis blasts life sentences as ‘hidden death penalty’," is the AFP report, via the Guardian.

Pope Francis has branded life-long prison terms “a hidden death sentence” in an attack on “penal populism” that included severe criticism of countries that facilitate torture.

In a wide-ranging speech to a delegation from the International Association of Penal Law, the pontiff said believers should oppose life-long incarceration as strongly as the use of capital punishment.

“All Christians and men of good faith are therefore called upon today to fight, not only for the abolition of the death penalty – whether it is legal or illegal and in all its forms – but also to improve the conditions of incarceration to ensure that the human dignity of those deprived of their freedom is respected.

“And this, for me, is linked to life sentences. For a short time now, these no longer exist in the Vatican penal code. A sentence of life (without parole) is a hidden death penalty.”

Catholic News Service posts, "Pope Francis calls for abolishing death penalty and life imprisonment," by Francis X. Rocca, via  National Catholic Reporter.

Pope Francis called for abolition of the death penalty as well as life imprisonment, and denounced what he called a "penal populism" that promises to solve society's problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.

"It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples' lives from an unjust aggressor," the pope said Thursday in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.

"All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment," he said. "Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty."

The pope noted that the Vatican recently eliminated the death penalty from its own penal code.

"Pope Francis Defends Prisoners' Rights, Calls For Abolition Of Death Penalty," is by Carol Kuruvilla for HuffPost.

Pope Francis is speaking up for some of the most outcast members of society -- the prisoners.

The pontiff issued a call for the abolition of the death penalty on Thursday, harshly criticizing prison systems around the world for overstepping boundaries, mistreating inmates, and failing to recognize the sanctity of human life.

“All Christians and men of good will are called today to fight not just for the abolition of the death penalty in all its forms, whether it be legal or illegal, but also the goal of improving prison conditions, out of respect of the human dignity of people deprived of their freedom," the pope said during a meeting with the International Association of Penal Law.

News.VA posts, "Pope to Association of Penal Law: Corruption is Greater Evil than Sin."

Today, the Holy Father received delegates from the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP), addressing them with a speech focusing on the issues in their subject area that have recourse to the Church in her mission of evangelization and the promotion of the human person.

The Pope began by recalling the need for legal and political methods that are not characterized by the mythological “scapegoat” logic, that is, of an individual unjustly accused of the misfortunes that befall a community and then chosen to be sacrificed. It is also necessary to refute the belief that legal sanctions carry benefit, which requires the implementation of inclusive economic and social policies. He reiterated the primacy of the life and dignity of the human person, reaffirming the absolute condemnation of the death penalty, the use of which is rejected by Christians. In this context he also talked about the so-called extrajudicial executions, that is, the deliberated killing of individuals by some states or their agents that are presented as the unintended consequence of the reasonable, necessary, and proportionate use of force to implement the law. He emphasized that the death penalty is used in totalitarian regimes as “an instrument of suppression of political dissent or of persecution of religious or cultural minorities”.

Related posts are in the religion category index.

Drug Companies and LI Drugs

NBC News posts, "Drug Maker Mylan Takes $70 Million Hit in Battle Over Lethal Injection," by Tracy Connor.

Alabama's plan to use a new drug to execute death-row prisoners is causing headaches for the pharmaceutical company that makes the chemical.

An anti-death penalty organization convinced a German financial firm to pull a $70 million investment in Mylan, the manufacturer of rocuronium bromide, a paralytic that is part of the state's untested three-drug lethal injection.

Jens Erhardt, managing director of asset manager DJE Kapital, told NBC News that his firm sold all its Mylan shares about a month ago because the drug giant would not guarantee its products won't wind up in executioners' syringes.

"We don't want to support this," Erhardt said. "If clients find out we have shares in companies that supply that drug, we have problems with our clients."

"Mylan faces investor pressures over use of drugs in US executions," is by Andrew Ward for Financial Times.

Mylan has become the target of anti-death penalty campaigners with a German investment fund selling its shares in the pharmaceuticals group because of concern that one of its products could be used in executions by American prisons.

Campaigners successfully lobbied DJE Kapital to dispose of its holding in the US generic drugmaker and are pressing other investors to do the same. It is the latest stage of a campaign that has previously forced Lundbeck of Denmark and Hospira of the US to announce measures to prevent their drugs being used in executions.

And:

Mylan said it was “dedicated to upholding the highest standards of quality and integrity” and only distributed products “through legally compliant channels, intended for prescription by healthcare providers consistent with approved labelling”.

Pressure from anti-death penalty campaigners has caused several pharmaceuticals companies to tighten controls on the sale of drugs with the potential to be used in executions. Teva of Israel and UK-listed Hikma are among others to have acted.

This has made it increasingly hard for US states to produce the lethal “cocktails” needed to kill prisoners on death row.

Related posts are in the international and lethal injection category indexes.  I'm also starting a new pharmaceuticals category index.

October 10 - World Day Against the Death Penalty - Updated

More information is at the World Coalition website.

"UN marks World Day against Death Penalty with strong calls to end ‘cruel practice’," is the news release issued by the United Nations News Centre.

The continuing application of the death penalty is a “cruel practice” that undermines human dignity, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he urged Member States to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights” and impose moratoriums on executions.

In a video message issued to an event that took place yesterday at the UN Office in Geneva to mark the annual observance of the World Day against the Death Penalty, the Secretary-General noted that an increasing number of States from all regions of the world had acknowledged the failure of capital punishment as a means to exact justice.

The death penalty, Mr. Ban said, does not deter crimes more than any other punishment and its abolition or moratorium can contribute “to the enhancement and progressive development of human rights.”

“The taking of life is too irreversible for one human being to inflict it on another,” he continued. “We must continue to argue strongly that the death penalty is unjust and incompatible with fundamental human rights.”

The event in Geneva also marked the European release of a new publication produced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), entitled Moving Away from the Death Penalty: Arguments, Trends and Perspectives, which places particular focus on the political leadership required to move away from capital punishment.

Recently, Equatorial Guinea, Pakistan, and the states of Washington, Maryland and Connecticut in the United States decided to establish a moratorium or suspend executions while last April, El Salvador, Gabon and Poland acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – an international agreement aimed at abolition. These countries join more than 160 other Members States who have already either eliminated capital punishment or do not practice it.

Also to mark the occasion, 13 UN member States signed an appeal to “jointly call for a world which respects human dignity.” In the joint appeal, the first ever launched by Foreign Ministers of both abolitionist and non-abolitionist States, the countries stress that while they respect the views of those who still support the use of the death penalty, they “consider that State executions should not be taking place in the 21st century. Modern justice systems must aspire to more than retribution.”

In a separate message delivered yesterday, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Šimonović, celebrated the overall trend towards abolition, adding that support for abolition resonated across regions, legal systems, traditions, customs and religious backgrounds.

But, he noted, amid all the successes there have also been setbacks with some States resuming executions after decades and others reintroducing it for certain offences. “In 2013, after many years of slow, but consistent moving away from the death penalty, we have had a 12 per cent increase in the number of executions when compared to 2012, and the number of executing states increased by one,” Mr. Šimonović told those gathered.

“Exactly for this reason, we need to continue our advocacy for the universal abolition of the death penalty.”

The Assistant Secretary-General highlighted three specific reasons for abolition which he said were clearly delineated in the OHCHR publication, such as the need to avoid executing those subjected to wrongful convictions; the lack of statistical evidence pointing to the death penalty as a useful deterrent; and the higher rate of execution among those from marginalized communities, including people with mental or intellectual disabilities.

He added that while some advocated capital punishment as retribution, research appeared to show the exact opposite – victims and their families “do not want revenge but prefer justice without revenge or retribution.”

“I strongly believe that one day, people will look back and wonder how it was possible that the death penalty ever existed—just like, in most societies today, it is already hard to understand how slavery could ever have been allowed,” Mr. Šimonović concluded.

“I hope that ‘one day’ is not far away from us. Abolition will undoubtedly enhance the rights of all humankind, starting with our most sacred right of all, the right to life.”

Jurist posts, "UN rights official calls for international abolition of death penalty," by Julie Deisher-Edward.

Speaking at the Geneva presentation of a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] Moving Away from the Death Penalty [text, PDF; JURIST report], UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic [official profile] urged the international abolition of the death penalty. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon [official profile] released a statement [press release] in support of the sentiment, saying "The taking of life is too irreversible for one person to inflict on another. We must continue arguing strongly that the death penalty is unjust and incompatible with fundamental human rights." Simonovic expressed particular concern [UN News Centre report] with the increase in the number of executions in recent years, despite a growing trend internationally toward the abolition of the death penalty [JURIST report]. Currently, 160 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.

"Senior UN Official Calls For Abolition Of Death Penalty," is from by RTT News.

As long as the death penalty exists, there will be a need to advocate against it, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Simonovic, declared Thursday at the launch of a new United Nations publication aimed at raising awareness on the abolition of capital punishment.

Speaking at the Geneva presentation of Moving away from the Death Penalty, Arguments, Trends and Perspectives, released by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Simonovic celebrated what he said was "worldwide accelerating progress" made towards abolition since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"Back then, 66 years ago, only 14 countries had abolished the death penalty, the majority in South America," Simonovic explained, adding that currently around 160 countries around the world had abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.

"Swiss launch joint declaration against death penalty," is from SwissInfo.ch.

On World Day against the Death Penalty, Swiss President Didier Burkhalter has launched a joint declaration in favour of death penalty abolition, together with 11 foreign ministers from around the world. 

“The death penalty is incompatible both with human rights – in particular the fundamental right to life – and with justice systems aimed at rehabilitation rather than retribution.” according to a government statement on Friday. 

Switzerland is working on this issue at both the international level – namely in the framework of the UN General Assembly, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe – and at the bilateral level, engaging in dialogue with countries that are on the path towards abolition. 

“The death penalty is irreversible and can lead to wrongful convictions, or even executions. Even in modern and transparent justice systems, human error remains an unavoidable risk,” the statement said. 

“Furthermore, the death penalty reinforces discrimination: investigations show that underprivileged, vulnerable or marginalised people are, in many places, disproportionately affected by the death penalty. Moreover, attempts at using the death penalty to fight crime, drug dealing or terrorism are, in Switzerland’s view, ineffective.” 

Switzerland has set itself an ambitious goal with the strategy it formulated last year: it wants to promote the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, or at least a moratorium on all executions, by 2025.

The full text of the "Joint Declaration of October 10, 2014," is below.  It's available in Adobe .pdf format at the link.

As we mark the 12th World Day against the Death Penalty, we jointly call for a world which respects human dignity. The death penalty, one of the most complex and divisive issues of our time, continues to question the fundamental values of our societies and to challenge our understanding of criminal justice.

We respect the views of those who still support the use of the death penalty, and we believe that everyone has a right to be protected from violent crime. However, we consider that state executions should not be taking place in the 21st century. Modern justice systems must aspire to more than retribution.

The main objections to the death penalty are well known. Despite popular belief, there is no evidence supporting the claim that executions deter or prevent crime. No justice system can ever be guaranteed free from error, meaning that death sentences may cause the innocent to be put to death. Often, capital sentences are disproportionately imposed on poor, vulnerable and marginalised persons, aggravating discrimination against the weakest in society. Finally, the capital sentence provides victims of crime and their families neither with commensurate compensation nor with spiritual relief. On the contrary, state killing results in more hatred and violence - the exact opposite of what modern justice systems should be trying to achieve.

This joint call, which we address to the world at large, is the first ever launched by Foreign Ministers of both abolitionist and non-abolitionist States. We recognize that exchange and cooperation are needed to move together towards more effective and more humane justice systems. Together, our countries have the experience and the drive to turn the death penalty into a sentence of the past. A vast majority of countries already supports worldwide death penalty abolition; we hope that all countries will soon join this trend.

Signed by the following Foreign Ministers (countries):
Héctor Marcos Timerman (Argentina),
Julie Bishop (Australia),
Nassirou Bako Arifari (Benin),
Djibrill Yipènè Bassolé (Burkina Faso),
Duly Brutus (Haiti),
José Antonio Meade Kuribreña (Mexico),
Luvsanvandan Bold (Mongolia),
Børge Brende (Norway),
Albert F. del Rosario (Philippines),
Didier Burkhalter (Switzerland),
Mevlüt Çavuolu (Turkey),
Philip Hammond (United Kingdom)

Related posts are in the abolition and international category indexes.

A Q&A with John Bessler

John Bessler recently took a break from his hectic schedule to participate in a Q&A about his latest book, The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution.  It's just been published by Carolina Academic Press.

Q.  You've written extensively about capital punishment over the years.  What led you to write The Birth of American Law.

A.  I've been writing about the death penalty for more than 20 years now.  My prior book, Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment (2012), traces the history of the U.S. Constitution's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.  The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (2014) tells the whole story of how the Italian Enlightenment influenced the American Revolution and, in particular, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  I wrote the book, which highlights, among other things, how capital punishment was curtailed in early American law, because there is a myth that the Founding Fathers were gung-ho about the death penalty.  In fact, the historical record shows that the founders were highly ambivalent about executions and greatly admired the writings of Cesare Beccaria, an Italian philosopher who opposed capital punishment.

Q.  Who was Cesare Beccaria?

A. Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) lived in Milan, one of the centers of the Italian Enlightenment.  He wrote a book in Italian in 1764 that was later translated into English in 1767 as On Crimes and Punishments.  The book was very popular in Europe and in colonial America, and it was avidly read by leading founders such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Adams quoted the book at the Boston Massacre trial and Jefferson copied numerous passages of it into his commonplace book and regularly recommended it to others.  Beccaria's ideas on crimes and punishments were widely discussed in America's founding era and they shaped early American constitutions and laws.

Q.  How did it come to be that an intellectual of the Italian Enlightenment had an impact on American's Founding Fathers?

A.  The trans-Atlantic book trade brought many new ideas to the New World.  Beccaria, like Montesquieu, believed that any punishment that goes beyond what is absolutely necessary is "tyrannical."  A number of Italians, including a botanist from Milan who was in Beccaria's social circle, also came to America during the founding era, so ideas were conveyed in that way, too.  Beccaria wrote a lot about cruelty, and his ideas shaped the founders as they wrestled with what should be considered to be cruel.  The Eighth Amendment was ratified in the decades after Beccaria's book became so popular.

Q.  It sounds as though Beccaria's ideas continue to have currency today.  We're still debating the death penalty; We're seeing greater use of restorative justice.

A.  Criminologists and legal historians still read Beccaria's book, but most Americans -- indeed, most lawyers -- know little if anything about him and his ideas.  My book, a comprehensive look at Beccaria's influence, attempts to correct that. In the founding era, the death penalty was the mandatory, or usual, punishment for certain crimes.  Today, however, the use of life-without-parole sentences far eclipses the use of executions. While convicted murderers are now regularly punished with LWOP sentences, death sentences and executions have become unusual or rare.  Indeed, non-lethal corporal punishments have already long been abandoned in the U.S. penal system, though executions continue in a few states, mostly in the South.

Q.  What else might tempt the reader to pick up The Birth of American Law.

A. The book is a fascinating story about how someone who never came to America had a major impact on the development of American law.  His ideas led to the abandonment of England's "Bloody Code" and to the creation of the penitentiary system.  The fact that the Founding Fathers admired the writings of a death penalty opponent is also quite interesting.

Thanks to John Bessler for taking the time to visit.

Earlier coverage of John Bessler's Birth of American Law begins at the link.

DEA Renews Arizona DoC's Registration to Import Pentobarbital

"Corrections department renews registration to import execution drug," is by Miranda Rivers of ASU's Cronkite News Online.

The Drug Enforcement Administration on Thursday renewed the Arizona Department of Corrections’ registration to import pentobarbital, the drug of choice for executions in states that allow lethal injection.

The notice comes just six weeks after the state executed Joseph Wood Jr. using a different set of drugs, midazolam and hydromorphone, in a process that took almost two hours and that witnesses said left Wood gasping for air.

“I would think they want it (pentobarbital) because what happened during their last execution was an embarrassment,” said Richard Dieter, executive director at the Death Penalty Information Center. He called pentobarbital the “most desired drug for states who administer the death penalty.”

But the drug has become increasingly hard for states to come by, as some manufacturers have refused to sell the drug for lethal injection.

And:

The renewal is just one step in what would be a long process toward the importation of pentobarbital, said experts familiar with the process. In addition to the DEA approval, the corrections department would also have to be granted approval from the Food and Drug Administration to import the drug.

"Arizona Approved To Import Drug Used For Executions," is by  Al Macias of KJZZ-FM, Phoenix Public Radio.

Arizona has received federal approval to import pentobarbital, the drug often used for executions in states that allow lethal injection.

The Drug Enforcement Administration on Thursday renewed the Arizona Department of Corrections’ registration to import the drug. But that doesn’t mean the drug will be used any time soon.

The notice comes just six weeks after the state executed Joseph Wood using a different set of drugs in a process that took almost two hours.

Earlier coverage from Arizona begins at the link.  You can also jump to earlier news of the DEA and Arizona lethal injection drugs.

Indefensible

That's the title of an article posted at Slate by Gabriel Urza.  It's subtitled, "Why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s lawyer is leaving the defense team—and the Army."  Here's the beginning:

Tuesday is Army Major Jason Wright’s last day as appointed counsel for Guantánamo Bay’s most well-known detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It’s also Wright’s last day in the United States Army.

In December of 2011, Wright was detailed to serve as one of two military-appointed lawyers for KSM, the purported mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and executioner of journalist Daniel Pearl. Mohammed—along with three co-defendants—faces trial before a military commission at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base for his role in the attacks, and faces a sentence of death if convicted. Wright spent nearly three years working between 50 and 60 hours a week as a Judge Advocate General (or JAG) on the KSM case. It was the case of a lifetime.  

But in a letter dated Feb. 26 of this year, the Army notified Wright that they were taking him off the case. The letter required Wright to attend a nine-month graduate program in military law. Wright requested a deferral (which had been granted when he received the same order the year before), but this time the request was denied. In Wright’s eyes, the order clearly put him in conflict with his ethical obligation to continue representing his client, the third-highest ranking member of al-Qaida. When he followed up, Wright learned that even if he were to attend the graduate program, upon completion he would not be reassigned to U.S. v. Mohammed. His orders were short and unambiguous: either quit the KSM defense team and attend the graduate program, or resign from the Army.

And so on March 26, 2014, after nine years in the Army, Major Wright tendered his resignation. This is his story.

Related posts are in the military category index.

The Continued Use of Pentobarbital

"2 states carry on with executions using sedative," is by Jim Salter of AP, via the Beaumont Enterprise.  It's also available from the St. Louis Tribune.  Here are excerpts from this lengthy article:

Despite a shortage of lethal-injection drugs, two of the nation's most active death penalty states have quietly carried on with executions by turning to pentobarbital, a powerful sedative that generally puts inmates to death swiftly and without complications.

Missouri and Texas have avoided the prolonged executions seen in other states where authorities are struggling to find a reliable chemical combination. The drug's apparent effectiveness raises questions about why it has not been more widely adopted.

And:

But in recent years, major drugmakers, many of them in Europe, stopped selling pharmaceuticals for use in executions, citing ethical concerns. By 2011, with sodium thiopental no longer available, Ohio became the first state to use pentobarbital in a single-drug execution.

Soon, the Danish maker of pentobarbital, Lundbeck Inc., initiated efforts to keep it out of the hands of corrections departments. That led Ohio and some other states that initially used the drug to abandon it.

Missouri and Texas have turned to compounding pharmacies to make versions of pentobarbital. But like most states, they refuse to name their drug suppliers, creating a shroud of secrecy that has prompted lawsuits.

Related posts are in the lethal injection category index.

Refusing to Sell LI Drugs

Global Post reports,"How an Indian entrepreneur is helping to resist executions in the US," by Mandakini Gahlot.  Here's the beginning:

In 2010, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services sent an email to a small, unknown, Indian pharmaceutical company in Mumbai, Kayem Pharmaceuticals. Navneet Verma, 54, the company's owner, was overjoyed: “I was happy to have the opportunity to do business with the United States,” he recalls.

The department in Nebraska was looking for sodium thiopental — an anesthetic — considered one of the world's "essential drugs" by the World Health Organization.

At the time Verma’s company was already supplying sodium thiopental to Angola, and the offer from the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) was an opportunity to boost revenue.

“I offered the drug to the Nebraska prison at approximately $2 a vial," he says. "It was profitable for me as I was spending less than a dollar to manufacture it. I knew it was going to a prison but I did not know why.”

What Verma was unaware of was that sodium thiopental was the top choice among three drugs commonly used in lethal injections for death row prisoners in the United States. The NDCS commissioned 500 vials of the drug from Verma's company.

Earlier coverage of the Nebraska drugs begins at the link.  Related posts are in the international category index.

Shifting American Attitudes on Capital Punishment

Here are two must-read articles.

"U.S. Edges Closer to Europe in Attitude Toward Capital Punishment, Experts Say," is by Brian Knowlton in the New York Times International edition.

Ambivalence about legally administered death, sponsored by the state with bureaucratic detachment but not always precisely carried out, has long run much deeper among Europeans than among Americans, and has led to its abolition or suspension over the past century in nearly all democracies and every European or Central Asian country but Belarus.

Their divergent attitudes toward capital punishment are among the most striking differences between Europe and the United States, where nearly two-thirds of the states still allow the death penalty.

A series of developments have now created new pressure to scale back or eliminate the death penalty in the United States, including problems carrying out executions through lethal injection, convictions that have proved improper, and court fights over whether inmates with limited intellectual capacity should be subject to capital punishment. Last Thursday, a federal judge stayed an execution set for this week in Missouri. Three other executions are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday in different states.

The question now is whether the United States is at the beginning of a process that will lead it closer to Europe and most other democracies in ending the practice or is just sorting out how to deal with temporary impediments to execution.

At Slate, William Saletan writes, "Are Americans Turning Against the Death Penalty?"  There are infographphics at the link.

For 40 years American politicians have assumed that favoring the death penalty is a winning political position. Is that era coming to an end? Is support for capital punishment, like opposition to gay marriage, evaporating?

We can’t be sure. But we’re seeing the first signs that it could happen.

And:

We got used to high levels of public support for capital punishment in the 1980s and 1990s. But it wasn’t always so: The death penalty was far less favored in the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes lacking majority or even plurality support. The lows we’re seeing today don’t guarantee a further slide—this century’s numbers could bounce around as much as last century’s. But when you look at the array of surveys descending into unfamiliar territory, and when you study the factors behind this descent, it’s reasonable to think it could keep right on going.

You may want to look at recent polling in the public opinion polling category index.

A Winfield Juror Calls for Clemency

Mother Jones posts, "A Missouri Juror Tries To Save Man She Helped Send to Death Row," by Stephanie Mencimer.

Americans are generally supportive of the death penalty, although slightly less now than 20 years ago. But capital juries are especially partial to the death penalty, largely by design: only people who support capital punishment are allowed to serve on them. So Kimberly Turner is an unusual defector. In 1998, the 30-year-old single mom served on a Missouri jury that sentenced John Winfield to death for murdering two women who were friends of his former girlfriend. Winfield is scheduled to be executed on June 18, the seventh execution in the state since November.

Turner, though, doesn't think Winfield should die. She has told his lawyers that while serving on the jury, court officials pressured the jury to continue deliberating, even though at least two jurors wanted to vote for life without parole. According to Turner, the jury was already a bit of a pressure cooker. They had been sequestered for several days, and by Friday night, the jurors wanted to go home. Turner also had been struggling to find care for her daughter while she performed her civic duty. So in the end, she and another juror who'd wanted to spare Winfield's life caved and voted for death. But 16 years later, she still regrets that vote and has been helping Winfield challenge his conviction.

Attorneys for John Winfield have issued more information, "Missouri State NAACP, Victim’s Daughter and Former Juror Call on Governor Nixon to Grant Clemency to John Winfield.  Growing Concern about Execution of “Model Prisoner” Scheduled for June 18 at 12:01 a.m. CT.

(Jefferson City, Missouri) Amid growing concern that the State of Missouri may be on the verge of executing a man who, by all accounts, is a model prisoner who does not deserve to die, prominent Missourians today are calling on Governor Jay Nixon to spare the life of John Winfield and commute his death sentence to life without parole. Mr. Winfield is scheduled for execution on June 18, 2014 at 12:01 a.m. CT.

The clemency petition, including letters urging clemency from the Missouri State NAACP Conference of Branches, the victim’s daughter, a former juror and other prominent individuals, is being delivered to Governor Nixon today.

The clemency petition states: “Mr. Winfield has rehabilitated himself after 18 years in prison. He mentors youth at Potosi Correctional Center and raises money for shelters and charities in St. Louis. Correctional staff at the St. Louis County Jail, where Mr. Winfield was held for two years before his trial, have described his positive influence on other prisoners and called him a unique example of the power of rehabilitation and ‘an ideal person to serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.’”

The clemency petition can be accessed at the link.

In its letter to the Governor, the Missouri State NAACP Conference of Branches wrote: “We support clemency for Mr. Winfield on several grounds, including the recent testimony from a juror at Mr. Winfield’s trial concerning the prosecutor’s manipulation of the nearly all-white jury’s racial biases, his family’s plea to spare Mr. Winfield’s life, and in particular the plea for mercy from Mr. Winfield’s daughter, whose mother was a victim of the crime, and Mr. Winfield’s exceptional adjustment to prison as a youth mentor and model inmate.”

Kimberly Turner, one of at least two jurors who voted to spare Mr. Winfield’s life, has asked the Governor for clemency and stated in a sworn declaration: “I recently learned that Mr. Winfield was a model inmate while he was in jail in St. Louis County awaiting trial, that he did not get in trouble, that he was a positive influence on other inmates, that he worked in prison and helped the guards, and that the guards trusted him. The guards did not want Mr. Winfield to be executed and thought that he would be productive and helpful if he served a life without parole sentence … If I had heard this evidence at trial, I would never have given into the pressure from the Court or the other jurors.”

Ms. Turner’s declaration can be accessed at the link.

The jury in Mr. Winfield’s case was all white except for one African American. Ms. Turner, one of the white jurors, stated in her sworn declaration that the prosecutor played upon the jury’s racial biases. She stated that the prosecutor painted Mr. Winfield as a “thug” who drove around St. Louis in a Cadillac with tinted windows. Due to the complete and admitted breakdown of Mr. Winfield’s trial attorneys, the jury did not hear that he was working hard to support his children or that he was trusted and respected by the county corrections officers.

Ms. Turner voted for life without parole, but she changed her vote after the court’s bailiff instructed the jurors to keep deliberating. The lone black juror also testified, under oath, that the bailiff told the jurors to keep deliberating at a time when they were split in their vote. A single vote for life without parole would have spared Mr. Winfield’s life.

In addition, Mr. Winfield’s daughter, Symone Winfield, whose mother was a victim of the crime, does not want her father executed. She stated in a sworn declaration: “My dad has been there for me at every step of my life, giving me encouragement, love, and support. I love him unconditionally and would be devastated if he were executed.” Ms. Winfield stated that she speaks with her father sometimes several times a day, he helps her family from prison, including preparing the paperwork so her grandmother could buy a house, and is engaged in her children’s lives.

The letter from the Missouri State NAACP Conference of Branches concludes:

“In addition to supporting his family, Mr. Winfield also serves as a positive influence and mentor to youth in prison and is described by inmates and corrections officers alike as a model inmate. He encourages younger inmates to abandon the negative influences in their lives, focus on family, and work toward establishing a productive life upon release. Mr. Winfield is known for his acts of kindness and generosity, from collecting tabs off of aluminum cans to raise money for a child cancer patient to helping illiterate prisoners write letters to their family, and he holds positions of leadership and responsibility in prison, including in the NAACP chapter. Mr. Winfield’s contributions to others in prison and to the young men who have since returned to society are valuable and we ask that you spare his life so that he may continue to make a difference.

“Please commute Mr. Winfield’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the interests of justice and mercy.”

The Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has issued a news release, "IACHR Urges United States to Suspend Execution of John Winfield."  Here's the full text:

Washington, D.C. - The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) urges the United States to suspend the judicial execution of John Winfield, beneficiary of precautionary measures granted by the IACHR. The execution is scheduled to take place on June 18, 2014, in the state of Missouri.

The IACHR granted precautionary measures to protect the life and physical integrity of John Winfield on June 6, 2014. The request for precautionary measures had been filed in the context of a petition alleging the violation of rights set forth in the American Declaration. Through the precautionary measures, the Commission asked the United States to refrain from carrying out the death penalty until the IACHR had the opportunity to issue a decision on the petitioner's claims regarding the alleged violations of the American Declaration. The Commission is processing the petition, which is currently in the admissibility stage of the proceedings. Both in the petition and the request for precautionary measures the petitioner argues that the method of execution is incompatible with international human rights standards, and that the state in question has failed to provide information about the drugs to be used in the execution.

The failure of a Member State of the Organization of American States to heed a request that it preserve a condemned prisoner's life pending review of his or her petition seriously contravenes its international legal obligations. This deprives condemned persons in the United States of their right to petition before the inter-American human rights system prior to the execution of the death penalty.

The Commission urges the United States to implement the precautionary measures regarding John Winfield until the Commission can issue a decision on the case, and to fully and properly respect its international human rights obligations, especially those derived from the American Declaration and the OAS Charter. In this regard, the IACHR expects the United States to suspend this execution.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

Earlier coverage of John Winfield's case begins at the link.

New Scholarship From Peter Hodgkinson

Peter Hodgkinson, OBE, is the Director of the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies at the Westminster Law School in London.  Two works he has been involved with as editor have recently been published.  Details at the links below:

Capital Punishment: New Prespectives

The International Library of Essays on Capital Punishment

• Vol 1 - Justice and Legal Issues

• Vol 2 - Abolition and Alternatives to Capital Punishment

• Vol 3 - Policy and Governance

Related posts are in the books and scholarship category indexes.

The Economist on America's Death Penalty

"Dismantling the machinery of death," appears in the April 26th print edition of the Economist.

America is unusual among rich countries in that it still executes people. It does so because its politicians are highly responsive to voters, who mostly favour the death penalty. However, that majority is shrinking, from 80% in 1994 to 60% last year. Young Americans are less likely to support it than their elders. Non-whites, who will one day be a majority, are solidly opposed. Six states have abolished it since 2007, bringing the total to 18 out of 50. The number of executions each year has fallen from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 39 last year (see article).

Many people regret this. Some feel that death is the only fitting punishment for murderers: that it satisfies society’s need for retribution. Some find a religious justification, such as the line in Exodus that calls for: “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth”. Such appeals to emotion or faith are hard to answer, although the Bible also has passages about not casting the first stone, and many conservative evangelicals have ended up in the odd position of prizing life when it comes to abortion, but not when it comes to prisoners (the Catholic church is pro-life on both counts). However, in a secular democracy a law of such gravity must have some compelling rational justification, which the death penalty does not.

"The slow death of the death penalty," is the post on the Economist website.

Several factors have driven death sentences and executions down. The simplest may be that America’s homicide rate has declined sharply—from 10.2 per 100,000 people in 1980 to 4.7 in 2012. With that broader decline has come a fall in the most heinous murders; ie, the sort that earn the harshest sentences. As Bob McCulloch, prosecuting attorney for St Louis County, explains: “In Missouri, most [murders] are second-degree…bar-room brawls, or some guys shooting each other over a bad dope deal.” First-degree murders, he says, “rape and murder, killing a police officer—those are all way down.”

Another shift is that most juries can now impose sentences of life without the possibility of parole. In 1972, when the Supreme Court suspended the death penalty (it was reinstated four years later), only seven states allowed such sentences. Now every state bar Alaska gives juries the option of making sure that a murderer will never be released (perhaps to kill again) without actually killing him.

That makes them warier of the needle. Texas, for instance, introduced life-without-parole sentences in 2005. “When that happened,” says Craig Watkins, district attorney for Dallas County, the state’s second-most populous county, “you saw a decrease in prosecutors even bringing death-penalty cases...Now you have a choice. Before, you didn’t.” And indeed, Texas sentences fewer people to death now (nine in 2013) than in 2004 (23).

The Myth of the Compassionate Execution

That's the title of an editorial published in the May edition of Scientific American.  The web edition is titled, "Let’s Stop Pretending the Death Penalty Is a Medical Procedure."

Yet even if executions are not medical, they can affect medicine. Supplies of propofol, a widely used anesthetic, came close to being choked off as a result of Missouri's plan to use the drug for executions. The state corrections department placed an order for propofol from the U.S. distributor of a German drug manufacturer. The distributor sent 20 vials of the drug in violation of its agreement with the manufacturer, a mistake that the distributor quickly caught. As the company tried in vain to get the state to return the drug, the manufacturer suspended new orders. The manufacturer feared that if the drug was used for lethal injection, E.U. regulators would ban all exports of propofol to the U.S. “Please, Please, Please HELP,” wrote a vice president at the distributor to the director of the Missouri corrections department. “This system failure—a mistake—1 carton of 20 vials—is going to affect thousands of Americans.”

This was a vast underestimate. Propofol is the most popular anesthetic in the U.S. It is used in some 50 million cases a year—everything from colonoscopies to cesareans to open-heart surgeries—and nearly 90 percent of the propofol used in the U.S. comes from the E.U. After 11 months, Missouri relented and agreed to return the drug.

Such incidents illustrate how the death penalty can harm ordinary citizens.

Related posts are in the lethal injection and physician category indexes.

Texas Executes Mexican Citizen

Texas carried out its sixth execution of 2014, last night in Huntsville.  It was the 514th post-Furman Texas execution since 1982, and the 275th execution under the administration of Gov. Rick Perry. Texas is responsible for more than 37% of the nation's post-Furman executions.

"Mexican Government Condemns Texas Execution Of 'Mentally Impaired' Inmate," is the Fox News Latino report.

The Mexican government condemned the execution of a Mexican national for fatally beating a former Baylor University history professor and attacking his wife more than 16 years ago.

On Wednesday, the Mexican government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying the execution of Ramiro Hernández Llanas, 44, through lethal injection was “in clear violation of the judgment of the International Court of Justice.”

"The Government of Mexico expresses its most vigorous protest at the failure to comply," the ministry said.

"Texas executes Mexican citizen with drugs from unknown provider," is the AP report, via the Guardian.

Hernandez-Llanas was the second Texas inmate to receive a lethal injection of a new supply of pentobarbital. Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials have refused to identify the source of the powerful sedative, contending secrecy is needed to protect the drug's provider from threats of violence from capital punishment opponents. The US supreme court backed the state's position in a related case last week.

Texas and other states that have the death penalty have been scrambling for substitute drugs or new sources for drugs for lethal injections after major drugmakers – many based in Europe with long-time opposition to the death penalty – stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.

Hernandez-Llanas' appeals were exhausted, and the Texas parole board on Tuesday refused to delay his death sentence or commute it to life in prison.

There have been 16 executions in American death penalty states this year; a total of 1,375 post-Furman executions since 1977.

According to TDCJ, Texas state district courts have set three additional execution dates.

Related posts are in the foreign citizen and international category indexes.

Amnesty International Issues 2013 Global Death Penalty Report

The Amnesty International report, The Death Penalty in 2013, is available at the link.  A webpage has additional resources.  There are infographics at both sites.

In the United States, Florida is referenced in two news articles.  "Florida Drags Down U.S. on Amnesty International’s Global Death Penalty Report," is the Daily Beast post by Nico Hines.

Florida has joined North Korea and Iran as a major concern for Amnesty International's death penalty campaigners.

At the launch of its annual report on global execution rates, Amnesty said the state’s law putting an express lane on death row was deeply troubling. “One of the biggest concerns we had this year was the adoption of legislation in Florida that aims at streamlining executions,” Amnesty death penalty campaigner Chiara Sangiorgio told The Daily Beast.

The Timely Justice Act signed into law by Republican governor Rick Scott is designed to get inmates into the execution chamber as quickly as possible once their appeals have been exhausted. Florida surpassed Texas in the number of death sentences handed down in 2013.

"Amnesty International reports 14 percent more deaths in 2013, yet finds a longer-term decrease even in the U.S.," is by Alfonso Serrano for Al Jazeera America.

William Van Poyck spent 25 years on death row before the state of Florida executed him last June in front of two dozen witnesses. His death by lethal injection transpired despite persistent claims that he had received inadequate legal representation during his trial, including his attorney’s failure to present mitigating evidence of child abuse and mental-health problems, and despite evidence that his co-defendant actually shot the victim, a prison guard.

Van Poyck’s case is one of hundreds detailed in an Amnesty International report released Wednesday highlighting worldwide trends in capital punishment in 2013, a year marked by a 14 percent increase in reported executions — 778 — compared with the previous year. The report, however, does not include numbers from China, where the death penalty is a state secret and data is unreliable. Amnesty believes China executed thousands of people last year.

Associated Press coverage is, "Amnesty International reports executions rose 15 percent worldwide in 2013," by Cara Anna.  It's via the Christian Science Monitor.

The number of known executions around the world rose almost 15 percent in 2013, and the United States was among the five countries putting the most people to death, a new report says.

The Amnesty International report released Wednesday comes shortly after a stunning decision this week by an Egyptian court to sentence to death 529 alleged supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood after a two-session trial. The London-based rights group has called the action "grotesque."

AFP reports, "China, world's top executioner, defends death penalty," via Global Post.

China defended the death penalty Thursday as a traditional deterrent, after a report said its annual executions had again far exceeded the rest of the world's combined.

Beijing judicially put to death thousands of people in 2013 compared to a total of 778 elsewhere, the campaign group Amnesty International said in its annual report. It did not give a specific figure for China as Beijing considers the statistic a state secret and does not release it.

Democracy Now posts, "Study: Executions Rose Worldwide in 2013."

Audrey Gaughran: "Almost a hundred more people were put to death in 2013 compared to 2012. The countries responsible for that sharp spike are largely Iran and Iraq. Four countries also resumed executions during 2013, which was quite troubling. But that said, the overall picture, the long-term picture, in terms of abolition of the death penalty is positive, and if we look back over 10, 20 years, we see a steady decline in the use of the death penalty."

"Global Executions Rise With Help From Iran and Iraq," by Maddy Fry for Time.

Almost 80 percent of all known executions were recorded in only three countries: Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In 2013, the number of executions in Iraq went up to 169, while Iran saw them rise to 369. At least 778 people were put to death in 2013, the rights group said, compared to 682 in 2012.

China is still thought to execute the most people, though exact numbers are kept secret.

Kuwait, Nigeria, Indonesia and Vietnam last year all resumed their use of capital punishment. But there has been a general decline in the total number of countries using capital punishment in the last 20 years. Many countries who executed people in 2012 did not do so in 2013, including Gambia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Deutsche Welle columnist Mirjam Gehrke writes, "The right to life is inviolable."

The number of documented executions last year increased by 15 percent compared to 2012. "The death penalty belongs to the authoritarian state, to the terror state and to dictatorship. It does not belong to liberal democracy," Thomas Dehler, a former German justice minister, once said.

Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, which lead the death penalty statistics, certainly aren't liberal democracies. In these countries human rights are trampled. Oil and arms deals with these countries have done little to influence this fact.

And the US is also still part of this inglorious society. The US is therefore an inglorious exception among western democracies and on the entire American continent. The fact that by now 18 federal states in the US have abolished the death penalty and that the number of executions decreased doesn't change the perception.

Related posts are in the death penalty in other countries, international, and report category indexes.

More Oklahoma LI Commentary & News Coverage

Today's Los Angeles Times publishes the editorial, "Oklahoma's stealth executions are an injustice."

A month from now, if all goes according to plan in Oklahoma, two convicted murderers will be executed by lethal injection, and without knowing exactly how the killing cocktail was put together or by whom. Without that knowledge, they could well be denied their basic constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The death penalty, as we've written before, is an indefensible mess of immorality, gamed judicial processes, misapplication based on race and class, and public expense. Now we can add that, at least in Oklahoma, it is being carried out in a climate of unacceptable secrecy. If the government is going to insist that it has the right to execute citizens, it must be transparent about the process and be ready to defend it in court.

The LA Times also reports, "Oklahoma court delays executions over plan to change lethal drugs," by Molly Hennessy Fiske.

The inmates' attorneys accused the state of secretly turning to a Tulsa compounding pharmacy that has also supplied Missouri with the drugs.

Because compounding pharmacies are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they argue there is a risk that inmates could suffer as they die. They believe Oklahoma used compounded pentobarbital in a January execution during which the inmate complained, "I feel my whole body burning.”
Corrections officials initially balked at identifying lethal injection drug suppliers, saying they wanted to protect their anonymity.

But in a legal filing Monday, state officials said they “remained without the drugs (pentobarbital, vecuronium bromide, potassium chloride) needed to carry out the lawful sentence of death.”

"Oklahoma Injected Lethal Drugs Into Its Death-Row Convicts–After They Were Executed," is the National Journal report by Dustin Volz.

The state of Oklahoma injected executed convicts with lethal drugs for "disposal purposes," newly published state records show.

The macabre practice, first reported Tuesday by The Colorado Independent, could tamper with postmortem toxicology results in a way that obscures from public knowledge the amount of pain endured during execution, a revelation that calls into question the state's methods for administering capital punishment at a time when lethal-injection protocols nationwide are drawing renewed scrutiny.

"Convicts executed in Oklahoma have in some cases died from overdoses of pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, the anesthetic, rather than the second and third injections in the three-drug cocktail, according to documents obtained by The Independent," reporter Katie Fretland writes. "Records show executioners then injected the remaining two drugs into convicts' dead bodies for what forms turned over in response to an open-records request refer to as 'disposal purposes.' "

 "Oklahoma court postpones executions because state can’t get drugs in time," by Lindsey Bever for the Washington Post.

The problem Oklahoma is facing is caused by the increasing reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to supply the drugs needed for lethal injections and of pharmacies to prepare the compounds necessary to ensure a quick death. Many companies based in Europe with longtime opposition to the death penalty simply stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.

The scarcity is forcing states to search for substitutes.

Already this year, the drug shortage prompted a failed attempt in Virginia’s legislature to allow the state to use the electric chair and another in Wyoming to allow the use of firing squads. A provision in Oklahoma’s state law kept it from falling back on either option this week.

The Guardian posts, "Oklahoma delays two executions amid lethal drugs shortage," by Amanda Holpuc.

US states have faced increasing difficulty in obtaining the drugs needed for an execution following a European-lead boycott.

Oklahoma’s execution process requires pentobarbital as a sedative, vecuronium bromide as a muscle relaxant and a third drug to stop the heart. Oklahoma said on Monday that it did not have any remaining supplies of those drugs.

"Okla. delays 2 executions because of drug shortage," by Gregg Zoroya at USA Today.

The struggle to procure pharmaceuticals plays out as executions appear to be on the decline. Although a majority of states -- 32-- still have the death penalty, the number of executions has fallen from 98 in 1999 to 39 last year.

In recent years, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland have abolished the death sentence; and governors in Washington, Colorado and Oregon have suspended the punishment. Courts have halted executions in Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana over lethal injection issues.

Like many states that turned to this method in recent decades -- rejecting age-old methods such as electrocution, gas chamber or firing squad -- Oklahoma state officials use a three-drug protocol. They first anesthetize the condemned with a barbiturate such as pentobarbital, then paralyze them with vecuronium bromide and stop their hearts with potassium chloride.

Additional coverage includes, "Oklahoma executions postponed after state fails to procure drugs," at Reuters.

"US halts 2 executions over drug shortage," by AFP, via News 24.

Al Jazeera America posts, "Oklahoma unable to buy lethal injection drugs for upcoming execution."

"Oklahoma delays two executions due to lack of drugs," by Sarah Muller at MSNBC.

"Oklahoma Ran Out of Drugs to Execute People, And That’s a Sign of Things to Come," by Josh Sanburn at Time.

"Oklahoma postponed two executions because it ran out of lethal injection drugs," by Jon Terbush for the Week.

"Oklahoma delays two executions due to lack of drugs needed for lethal injection," by Martha Neil at ABA Journal.

Earlier coverage of Oklahoma lethal injection issues begins at the link.

Death Penalty in U.S. Spurs Wild West Scramble for Drugs

That's the title of a must-read recap of the current status of the scramble for LI drugs by departments of corrections, by Gregg Zoroya in USA Today.  It's subtitled, "Capital punishment in the USA is in decline as states wrestle to find drugs for lethal injections."

Here's the beginning:

Prison guards meet in the desert to hand off chemicals for executions. A corrections boss loaded with cash travels to a pharmacy in another state to buy lethal sedatives. States across the country refuse to identify the drugs they use to put the condemned to death.

This is the curious state of capital punishment in America today.

Manufacturers are cutting off supplies of lethal injection drugs because of opposition to the death penalty, and prison officials are scrambling to make up the deficit — sharing drugs, buying them from under-regulated pharmacies or using drug combinations never employed before in putting someone to death.

At the same time, growing numbers of states are ending capital punishment altogether. Others are delaying executions until they have a better understanding of what chemicals work best. And the media report blow-by-blow details of prisoners gasping, snorting or crying out during improvised lethal injection, taking seemingly forever to die.

The last major multi-jurisdictional news article on the topic is at the list.  Related posts are in the lethal injection category index.

ABA Journal Looks at State Secrecy in LI Drug Supply

"States keep mum on where lethal injection drugs are made," is an excellent overview by Wendy N. Davis in the March issue of ABA Journal.  Here's the beginning, which starts in Missouri:

Like other states with the death penalty, Missouri is facing a shortage of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, primarily because its Danish manufacturer won’t allow it to be used in executions.

So when the state initially set an execution date for convicted serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, officials announced that they would instead inject Franklin with a lethal dose of propofol, the same anesthetic that killed Michael Jackson.

But after the European Union threatened to limit shipments of propofol to the United States, as a protest against capital punishment, Gov. Jay Nixon had to order the state Department of Corrections to devise a different method of execution. A few weeks later, the state decided to use pentobarbital after all, and to obtain it from a compounding pharmacy, a company that manufactures the drug but without the same level of federal oversight as big manufacturers.

Earlier coverage from Missouri begins with the preceding link.  Also available, more on international pressure; related posts are in the lethal injection category index.

Lethal Injection Drugs

"Can Europe End the Death Penalty in America?" is by Matt Ford at the Atlantic.

Lethal injection is by far the predominant method of execution in the United States. Before the drug shortage, virtually every lethal-injection protocol used the same three-drug method. A first drug, sodium thiopental, anesthetized the prisoner. Then a second drug, pancuronium bromide, paralyzed the inmate and halted his or her breathing. Finally, an injection of potassium chloride stopped the heart. Jay Chapman, an Oklahoma medical examiner with little pharmacology experience, first proposed the three-drug protocol in 1977. Asked about his qualifications by a New York Times reporter 30 years later, Chapman described himself as “an expert in matters after death but not in getting people that way.”

Texas became the first state to use lethal injection when it executed Charles Brooks, Jr. on December 7, 1982. Since then, U.S. states have executed over 1,000 death-row inmates by lethal injection. By the time the three-drug cocktail's constitutionality came before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 in Baze v. Rees, lethal injection had become the preferred method of execution for 36 states and the federal government. Thirty of those states used Chapman’s method. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the three-drug protocol in a 7-2 decision.

The European Union, for its part, makes no secret of its death-penalty stance. EU guidelines call for its “universal abolition” and declare that doing so would “[contribute] to the enhancement of human dignity and the progressive development of human rights.” EU diplomats and leaders frequently petition U.S. governors and state parole boards to halt forthcoming executions. Sometimes, the supranational organization even works in more subtle ways: EU agencies contributed over $4.8 million in donations to U.S. anti-death-penalty organizations between 2009 and 2013.

NBC News posts, "Death by Lethal Injection Faces New Hurdles," by Tracy Connor.

Until about 2010, most death-penalty states used a three-drug cocktail that was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court: the anesthetic sodium thiopental, the paralytic pancuronium bromide, and heart-stopping potassium chloride to stop the heart, causing death.

In 2011, Hospira, the sole U.S. producer of sodium thiopental, stopped making the drug, and the European manufacturer balked at exporting it to the U.S. if it were to be used in executions.

Manufacturers of substitute drugs like pentobarbital have also refused to supply it for executions, forcing states to turn to compounders, who mix specialty drugs from their basic components.

Defense lawyers argue that's illegal, claiming the lack of oversight prevents jailers from guaranteeing an execution won't be agonizing enough to violate the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

They have attacked states' attempts to keep the names of the pharmacies secret — Georgia's highest court is set to decide soon whether it's legal — and it's easy to see why.

"Lethal Injection Drug Shortage Becomes More Acute," is by Jim Salter of Associated Press.  It's via HuffPost.

The nation's shortage of execution drugs is becoming increasingly acute as more pharmacies conclude that supplying the lethal chemicals is not worth the bad publicity and the legal and ethical risks.

The scarcity of drugs for lethal injections has forced states to scramble for substitutes. And experts say that whatever alternatives are found will almost certainly face costly court challenges made more complicated by laws that cloak the process in secrecy.

And:

Lethal injection has faced increasing scrutiny over the past decade. Major drug makers, many of them based in Europe with longtime opposition to the death penalty, have stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments. The source of the drugs is moving to the forefront of the death penalty debate.

Compounding pharmacies — which custom-mix prescription drugs for doctors and patients — seemed like the answer. They are generally overseen by state boards, not the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, although a law adopted last year allows larger compounding pharmacies to register with the FDA and submit to federal inspections.

But now, some compounding pharmacies are starting to back away, too.

Experts say they're not surprised, given the limited profit in selling execution drugs, ethical concerns in the medical profession, potential legal costs and unwanted publicity.

"This is not a good business model for compounding pharmacies, to be making drugs for executions, particularly with all the secret ways they're doing it," Fordam Law School professor Deborah Denno said.

Earlier coverage of international pressures and restrictions by pharmaceutical makers, at the link.

Related posts are in the international and lethal injection category indexes.

The European Impact

"Europe’s moral stand has U.S. states running out of execution drugs, complicating capital punishment," is the AP report by Juergen Baetz, datelined Brussels.  It's via CBS News and is also available from the Springfield News-Leader.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

There's one big reason why the United States has a dearth of execution drugs so acute that some states are considering solutions such as firing squads and gas chambers: Europe's fierce hostility to capital punishment.

The phenomenon started nine years ago when the EU banned the export of products used for execution, citing its goal to be the "leading institutional actor and largest donor to the fight against the death penalty." But beefed up European rules mean the results are being most strongly felt in the United States now, with shortages becoming chronic and gruesome executions making headlines.

And:

EU nations are notorious for disagreeing on just about everything when it comes to common policy, but they all strongly — and proudly — agree on one thing: abolishing capital punishment.

Europe saw totalitarian regimes abuse the death penalty as recently as the 20th century, and public opinion across the bloc is therefore staunchly opposed to it.

The EU’s uncompromising stance has set off a cat-and-mouse game, with U.S. corrections departments devising new ways to carry out lethal injections only to hit updated export restrictions within months.

“Our political task is to push for an abolition of the death penalty, not facilitate its procedure,” said Barba Lochbihler, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights.

Europe’s tough stance has caused U.S. states to start experimenting with new drug mixtures, even though convicts’ lawyers and activists argue they increase the risk of painful prolonged death and may violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Related posts are in the international and lethal injection category indexes.

Lethal Injection Roundup

Andrew Cohen writes, "America Is Terrible at Killing People Legally," for Politico Magazine.

Herbert Smulls, a convicted murderer, was put to death by Missouri officials while his final appeal was still being considered by the United States Supreme Court. The process by which lethal drugs were pushed into the condemned man’s veins began at 10:11 p.m. Missouri officials told me last Friday that they proceeded with the execution, despite the pendency of an appeal, because there were no stays in place at the time and because the justices in Washington had repeatedly rejected Smulls’ requests for a stay in the hours leading to his death. Smulls was pronounced dead at 10:20 p.m. In figuring that the Supreme Court would again decline to stop the execution, Missouri guessed correctly this time. The Court denied Smulls’s final stay request at 10:24 p.m. He was dead four minutes before his legal rights were exhausted. Death penalty experts, people who have spent decades working on capital cases, were mortified. It’s just not supposed to happen that way.

This is just the latest episode suggesting a level of chaos, a form of lawlessness even, in the administration of the death penalty in America. Other examples abound and include the continued execution of the “mentally retarded,” (an outdated term the Court continues to use) which was supposed to be outlawed by the Supreme Court in 2002 but which is occurring anyway. Another example lies in the Court’s lax standards, and negligible oversight, in evaluating capital cases involving prosecutorial misconduct or ineffective assistance of counsel. In Texas, even the correctional officers’ union is calling for improved conditions for death row inmates while lawmakers in states like Virginia and Missouri (and others) are considering the return of firing squads and electric chairs. Through inaction or indifference, the justices have signaled to state officials that they can push envelopes in capital cases they would not have pushed five or 10 years ago.

The most litigious current example of this phenomenon surrounds the use of secretive new approaches by state officials in Missouri, Louisiana, Texas and elsewhere to hide critical information about the drugs they want to use to execute inmates. This lack of transparency raises profound constitutional questions and yet so far the justices have been unwilling or unable to provide answers. Thus we have entered a newly unsettled era of death penalty law—unsettled even by the contentious standards of modern death penalty jurisprudence—that requires judicial oversight. The Supreme Court must act now to bring order to this growing chaos.

Democracy Now posts, "Execution Chaos: Witnesses Say Executions Are Botched As States Use Untested, Secret Drug Cocktails," with Amy Goodman.  There is video at the link.

 As drug companies refuse to let their products be used for the death penalty, states are using untested drug combinations that have resulted in deaths like that of Dennis McGuire in Ohio, where the state used untested two-drug method despite warnings it might cause immense suffering. We speak with the reporter who witnessed the execution, and with a lawyer for a man executed in Missouri with an entirely different lethal drug cocktail, made by a pharmacy the state refused to name.

And:

We speak with Alan Johnson, reporter with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, who witnessed McGuire’s execution and says he observed him gasping for air, and that he appeared to be choking. We are also joined by Cheryl Pilate, one of the lead attorneys for Herbert Smulls, who was executed Jan. 29 with a lethal dose of pentobarbital that was made by a compounding pharmacy the state refuses to name. Also joining is is Megan McCracken, attorney with the University of California, Berkeley School of Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, where she is an expert on lethal injection methods.

"New complications in executions bring new death penalty discussions," is by Patricia Zapor of Catholic News Service.  It's via the Boston Pilot.

International law, the risk of using inhumane methods of execution and opposition to capital punishment by the survivors of murder victims are among issues that are bringing fresh energy to debate about the death penalty.

In mid-January, Father Lawrence Hummer, of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Chillicothe, Ohio, witnessed the execution of Dennis McGuire for the 1989 rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart, who was 30 weeks pregnant.

A week later, publications around the world were printing the priest's account of watching what he called an inhumane procedure in which the convicted murderer struggled for 26 minutes while a previously untested mixture of drugs was used to execute McGuire.

At about the same time, the execution of a Mexican citizen drew international attention and warnings from the U.S. State Department that the refusal of the State of Texas to review the man's conviction in light of an international court ruling might put U.S. citizens at risk while traveling abroad.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, the parents of a prison guard who was beaten to death by an inmate in 2002 are battling the county prosecutor for the right to be heard at the retrial of the man who previously confessed to killing their son.

"States that actually murder by the death penalty," syndicated columnist and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff's latest.  It's via the Columbia Daily Herald.

While some states have ended the death penalty, it still persists in others, and capital punishment remains a federal death sentence.

Indeed, a shocking (and, to me, sickening) lead editorial in The New York Times last week revealed the means that certain states use to continue creating death penalty corpses. These states viciously violate not only the Constitution, but also the most basic American rules of law and our most profound national values.

How many of us know what those are?

Deserving at the very least a Pulitzer, this editorial explained how certain remaining death penalty states “hide the means by which they kill people”

 Earlier coverage of Herbert Smulls' execution, Andrew Cohen's earlier writing on Missouri's rush to execute, Ohio's botched execution of Dennis McGuire, Texas execution of Edgar Tamayo Arias, and Bob Autobee's demonstration in Colorado, at the links.

Related posts are in the lethal injection index.

Nebraska Supreme Court Hears Lethal Injection Case

Today's Omaha World-Herald reports, "Nebraska lacks drug for lethal injections, has no way to carry out executions."   It's by Joe Duggan.

Nebraska prison officials have not replaced a lethal injection drug that expired late last year, meaning the state currently has no way to carry out an execution.

A prison spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that the state has yet to obtain a new supply of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs needed for lethal injection in Nebraska.

Questions about the drug came up Tuesday during oral arguments on a death penalty appeal by former cult leader Michael W. Ryan.

Nebraska Supreme Court Judge William Connolly asked if the state has a legal source of sodium thiopental. Assistant Attorney General James Smith said he did not know because he had not checked on the status of the drug before the hearing.

The administrative code that governs the execution protocol says expired lethal substances must be cleared from inventory and replaced by the State Department of Correctional Services.

And:

Attorney General Jon Bruning has said the state needs to move to a less specific drug protocol to provide the flexibility to carry out an execution. He also said several weeks ago that the Corrections Department can change the protocol administratively.

Gov. Dave Heineman said last month that corrections officials were working on the issue.

'High court hears arguments over execution challenges," is the Lincoln Journal Star coverage by Kevin O'Hanlon.

A case that started as a challenge of how prison officials obtained a key lethal injection drug morphed Tuesday into a discussion before the state Supreme Court of the proper venue in which to challenge Nebraska's method of execution.

Rob Kortus of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, who is representing death-row inmate Michael Ryan, originally asked the court to review how state corrections officials got a lethal injection drug made by a Swiss company.

Nebraska and several other states that use sodium thiopental as part of their execution protocol were forced to buy the drug overseas when the last U.S. manufacturer quit making it in 2010 because of death-penalty opposition from customers.

Sodium thiopental recently has been banned for export by the European Union and is becoming increasingly difficult to get. It is made in India and China, but defense lawyers have questioned the quality.

Kortus also had questioned the quality of the drug Nebraska had, which was purchased through a middleman. But the state's two batches of sodium thiopental have since expired, and the state has none on hand.

That caused some of the high court judges to steer the arguments to whether state courts should be able to rule on the legality of the state's method of execution instead of forcing defendants to file federal court actions.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit ruled last year that the sodium thiopental acquired by Nebraska and several other states for use in executions should not have been allowed into the country.

Earlier coverage from Nebraska begins at the link.

Justia Commentary From Michael Dorf

"The Supreme Court’s Responsibility for Recent Death Penalty Mishaps," is by Cornell Law Professor Michael C. Dorf.

The execution rate in the United States has declined in the last two decades, but what the late Justice Harry Blackmun famously called “the machinery of death” remains deeply flawed. Two recent controversial executions illustrate how capital punishment continues to defy attempts at civilizing.

Some methods of execution that are now regarded as horrific were first introduced as efforts to decrease the suffering of the condemned during the process by which the state deliberately takes his life.  The guillotine and the electric chair were each, in their day, considered humane.  In more recent times, lethal injection has become the supposedly humane method of choice.

In principle, lethal injection could make death relatively painless.  People euthanizing a suffering family pet or, in jurisdictions that permit physician-assisted suicide, hastening their own deaths, routinely choose a lethal dose of barbiturate to ease the passage.

But execution at the hands of the state by lethal injection typically involves a “cocktail” of three chemicals, rather than a large dose of sedative.  As a consequence, it holds the potential for horrific mishaps.  If the paralytic chemical takes effect but the anesthetic does not, the condemned may experience excruciating pain but appear outwardly placid, as the paralytic prevents him from showing what is happening.  (The same problem has sometimes plagued anesthesia during surgery.)

Dorf also examines Texas' execution of Edgar Tamayo Arias:

The torturous execution of Dennis McGuire was not the only illegal administration of the death penalty in recent weeks.  Last week, Texas executed Mexican national Edgar Tamayo over the objections of the government of Mexico and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.  Their pleas to Texas Governor Rick Perry and to the Supreme Court fell on deaf ears.

Coverage of the lethal injection issues is cataloged in the category index; also, available, coverage and commentary on the Tamayo execution.

The Execution of Edgar Tamayo Arias

Foreign Policy posts commentary by J.Dana Stuster, "Texas to Washington: Executing Mexicans is our business, not yours." It's also available as an OpEd from the Miami Herald.

When Texas executed Edgar Arias Tomayo last week, he became the third Mexican national to receive the death penalty in that state since 2008. And if it takes three events to establish a trend, then the trend is set: Every few years, Texas begins the process to execute a Mexican convict on death row. Next, the Mexican government and U.S. State Department object. Then Texas shrugs and goes ahead.

Tomayo and the two previously executed Mexican nationals are not sympathetic characters. Tomayo was convicted of shooting a Houston police officer three times in the back of the head in 1994; José Medellin and Humberto Leal Garcia were both convicted on rape and murder charges. Their guilt is not the State Department and Mexican government’s issue with the cases.

Rather, the concern is that Medellin, Leal Garcia and Tomayo were not notified of their right to legal assistance from the Mexican consulate upon their arrest. That’s a violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which states that foreign nationals have a right to contact and consult with consular officials from their countries upon their arrest. Not only does the United States have an obligation, by law, to inform arrested foreign nationals of their rights, the State Department argues, but adhering to that law is important to make sure that Americans abroad are afforded the same protections.

And:

Ramiro Hernandez Llanas, the next Mexican national cited in Avena, is scheduled to be put to death on April 9th.

Earlier coverage of the case begins at the link.  Related posts are in the foreign citizen and international law category indexes.

Texas Executes Mexican Citizen After Supreme Court Rejects Review

"Texas Executes Mexican Man for Murder," is the New York Times report by Manny Fernandez.

Despite opposition from the State Department, Mexican officials and Latino advocates, Texas executed Edgar Arias Tamayo on Wednesday night, putting to death a Mexican citizen whose case raised questions about the state’s duty to abide by international law.

Mr. Tamayo, 46, was strapped to a T-shaped gurney in the state’s death chamber at a prison in Huntsville, injected with a lethal dose of the sedative known as pentobarbital and pronounced dead at 9:32 p.m. Mr. Tamayo was the 509th inmate executed by Texas in the past three decades and had been one of 21 foreign citizens on its death row.

The case became an international issue that Mexican officials and Secretary of State John Kerry said threatened to strain relations between the two countries. Mr. Tamayo’s arrest in Houston in 1994 on charges of murdering a police officer violated the international treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The authorities neglected to tell him of his right under the Vienna Convention to notify Mexican diplomats.

In executing Mr. Tamayo, Texas officials disregarded an international court’s order that his case be reviewed to determine what impact the violation of his consular rights had on his conviction. That decision, made in 2004 by the World Court, the top judicial body of the United Nations, was binding on the United States under international law, Mr. Kerry had told Texas officials. No United States court had given Mr. Tamayo such a review.

 AP coverage is, "Texas death row inmate Edgar Tamayo of Mexico executed after appeals denied," by Michael Graczyk.  It's via the Austin American-Statesman.

Tamayo’s case drew criticism from the Mexican government and pressure from the U.S. State Department after attorneys argued that he wasn’t immediately advised he could seek help from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested in 1994.

The Supreme Court considered at least two late appeals. One focused on whether he was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty. The other was related to the consular issue.

"Texas executes Mexican citizen who killed police officer," is the Los Angeles Times report by Molly Hennessy-Fiske.

Edgar Tamayo Arias, 46, was put to death at 9:32 p.m. Central time for killing a Houston police officer in 1994, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Tamayo made no last statement, Clark said.

Tamayo's attorneys fought until the last minute to save his life, appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution. It was denied. They argued that Tamayo had been deprived of his rights because, as a foreign citizen, he should have been informed of his right to diplomatic assistance under an international treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

Tamayo's lawyers turned to the high court after the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their appeal that Tamayo was developmentally disabled, mentally ill and ineligible for execution.

"If he had had the assistance of the Mexican Consulate at the time of trial, Mr. Tamayo would never have been sentenced to death," his attorneys, Sandra Babcock and Maurie Levin, said in a statement after the Supreme Court refused to grant a stay. "This case was not just about one Mexican national on death row in Texas. The execution of Mr. Tamayo violates the United States' treaty commitments, threatens the nation's foreign policy interests, and undermines the safety of all Americans abroad."

CNN posts, "Convicted Cop killer Edgar Tamayo Arias Executed."

In the past five years, Texas has executed two other Mexicans convicted of murder who raised similar claims. The Supreme Court refused to delay either of those executions, which took place in2008 and 2011.

Tamayo's lawyers argued the consulate access violation was more than a technicality - that Mexican officials would have ensured he had the most competent trial defense possible, if they had been able to speak with him right after his felony arrest.

"US top court denies reprieve for Mexican death row inmate," is by Chantal Valery of AFP, via Digital Journal.

Tamayo spoke very little English at the time of his arrest and is mentally handicapped, his lawyers said.

"If he had had the assistance of the Mexican consulate at the time of trial, Mr Tamayo would never have been sentenced to death," defense attorneys Sandra Babcock and Maurie Levin said in a statement.

He will be the third Mexican national to be executed in Texas without proper judicial review of the fact that they were denied their right to consular assistance.

"The execution of Mr Tamayo violates the United States' treaty commitments, threatens the nation's foreign policy interests and undermines the safety of all Americans abroad," the lawyers added.

"Texas executes Mexican national after Supreme Court rejects appeal," by Alfonso Serrano at Aljazeera America.

The case has raised tensions with Mexico, which claims that Tamayo and 50 other Mexicans awaiting execution in the U.S. were convicted without being informed of their right to contact the Mexican Consulate upon arrest — a violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

As a result, Mexico argues, Tamayo was denied assistance that could have proved crucial in deciding his case.

“If Edgar Tamayo’s execution were to go ahead without his trial being reviewed and his sentence reconsidered,” Mexico's Foreign Ministry said in a statement prior to the execution,  “… it would be a clear violation of the United States’ international obligations.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to have heard that message. In a December letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Kerry urged him to reconsider the execution on the grounds that it would damage relations with Mexico and make it more difficult to protect U.S. citizens in legal trouble abroad.

"Texas executes Mexican citizen despite outcry," at France 24 with additional material from AFP and Reuters.

"The execution of [Arias] violates the United States' treaty commitments, threatens the nation's foreign policy interests and undermines the safety of all Americans abroad," his lawyers added.

"It is now imperative that Congress promptly act to ensure passage of legislation that will bring the US into compliance with its international legal commitments and provide judicial review to the Mexican nationals who remain on death row in violation of their consular rights."

The 1963 Vienna Convention treaty, to which 176 nations are party including the US, sets out how authorities must act when foreign nationals are arrested or detained.

It involves notifying the individuals in question of their right to have their consulate informed of their arrest. They subsequently have the right to consular assistance.

Latin Times posts, "Edgar Tamayo-Arias Executed In Texas After Supreme Court Rejects Postponement," by David Iaconangel.

A 2004 International Court of Justice ruling ordered that his case and that of 49 other Mexican citizens who were tried in the US but never received consular assistance be reviewed. The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had refused, saying details on his case had already been reviewed during appeals; the office of Governor Rick Perry concurred. Their stance sparked protests in Tamayo Arias' home state of Morelos, in Mexico, and occasioned letters from Mexican officials and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who argued that if the condemned were to be executed without review, it could jeopardize treatment of Americans abroad. 

"While Mexico is riled by Texas execution, many actually support the death penalty," is by Dudley Althaus at GlobalPost.

Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2005, and hasn’t executed a civilian since 1937 or a military convict in 53 years.

So, as with similar cases, news of Tamayo’s fate has filled Mexican airwaves and web pages, fueling heated debates on talk radio and online social media, in restaurants and bars.

More than 12 million Mexico-born people live north of the border. That the migrants left seeking a better life rankles many in Mexico. So does the perception that the United States mistreats Mexican emigres.

Public opinion often leans in favor of migrants accused of crimes in the United States — even if the same criminal acts committed in Mexico draw outrage.

"Even if he were guilty he has already paid with 20 years in prison. That’s enough," Andrea Nunez commented on the website of the newspaper Excelsior.

It was Texas' first execution of 2014, and the state's 509th post-Furman execution since 1982. Texas is responsible for more than 37% of the nation's post-Furman executions.

There have been four executions by American death penalty states in 2014; a total of 1,363 post-Furman executions since 1977.

Related posts are in the foreign citizen and international law category indexes.

Earlier coverage of Edgar Tamayo Arias' case begins at the link.

Texas Execution of Mexican Citizen Scheduled for Wednesday

Texas is set to carry out its first execution of 2014, tonight in Huntsville.  It would be the 509th post-Furman Texas execution since 1982. Texas is responsible for more than 37% of the nation's post-Furman executions.

There have been three executions by American death penalty states in 2014; a total of 1,362 post-Furman executions since 1977.

The scheduled execution of Edgar Tamayo Arias is getting widespread, international attention.

Today's Austin American-Statesman publishes the editorial, "State should delay Edgar Tamayo execution."

Once again, Texas is preparing to execute a Mexican citizen who wasn’t granted immediate access to Mexican consular officials as international treaty requires. The move, should the state succeed in executing Edgar Tamayo on Wednesday evening as scheduled, not only would ignore international law but also could put relations between the United States and Mexico at risk and potentially harm the treatment of Americans abroad.

Tamayo’s lawyers filed suit against Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to try to stop his execution. It’s important to note that the issue is not whether Tamayo, 46, is guilty of killing Houston police officer Guy Gaddis, 24, in 1994 by shooting him three times in the back of the head.

At issue is what didn’t happen after Tamayo was arrested. Texas authorities ignored American obligations under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and failed to tell Tamayo that he had the right to contact Mexican officials after his arrest.

The consular treaty, which was negotiated, signed and ratified by the United States in the 1960s, requires local authorities to notify detained foreign nationals of their right to have their consulate informed of their arrest. It further allows consuls to arrange legal representation for citizens arrested abroad. The treaty ensures Americans abroad consular protection, and it is meant to do the same for foreign nationals in the United States.

"As execution nears, Mexican national Edgar Tamayo denied clemency," is the news report, also in today's Statesman.  It's by Mike Ward.

With his scheduled execution just hours away, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied a clemency request from a Mexican national convicted of gunning down a Houston police officer in 1994.

Parole officials said Wednesday the board refused a clemency request by a majority vote.

The decision came after attorneys for Edgar Arias Tamayo on Tuesday asked U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin to delay the execution scheduled Wednesday evening, alleging the clemency process is legally flawed. No decision has been announced.

In announcing its vote, the seven-member parole board noted that federal appellate courts have upheld its authority to deny clemency.

"Attorneys, Mexican officials want impending execution of Mexican man halted in Texas," is the AP report by Michael Graczyk, via the Republic.

Mexican officials are incensed because Texas has opposed legal efforts and spurned diplomatic pressure to spare a prisoner who was in the U.S. without legal permission when he was condemned for fatally shooting a Houston police officer two decades ago.

Edgar Arias Tamayo, 46, was set for lethal injection Wednesday for the January 1994 slaying of Guy Gaddis, 24.

And:

Secretary of State John Kerry previously asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to delay Tamayo's punishment, saying it "could impact the way American citizens are treated in other countries." The State Department repeated that stance Tuesday.

But Abbott's office and the Harris County district attorney opposed postponing what would be the first execution this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state, where 16 people were put to death in 2013.

The Mexican government said in a statement this week it "strongly opposed" the execution and reminded that failure to review Tamayo's case and reconsider his sentence would be "a clear violation by the United States of its international obligations."

"Planned execution in Texas draws high-profile protests," is by Molly Hennessy-Fiske for the Los Angeles Times.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Austin rejected Tamayo's request for an order that would have prevented Gov. Rick Perry and the parole board from considering his clemency petition until the fairness of the state's clemency process could be reviewed. The judge found that the clemency process satisfied constitutional requirements and did not violate Tamayo's right to due process of law.

Tamayo's attorneys vowed to keep fighting.

"The Texas clemency process is the weakest in the nation, in the state that executes the most. Allowing Mr. Tamayo's fate to be decided by a board that has refused to provide meaningful consideration of evidence that Mr. Tamayo has mental retardation and that his trial was fundamentally unfair as a result of the violation of his consular rights is an affront to what clemency is supposed to be," the attorneys said in a statement.

"Mexican’s likely execution in Texas reignites dispute over global treaty," is by Tim Johnson of McClatchy News, and is datelined Mexico City.  It's via the Kansas City Star.

When Texas administers a lethal injection to convicted cop killer Edgar Tamayo on Wednesday, it will defy the Mexican government and the U.S. State Department and put Texas once again into a dispute over the rights of foreigners held on death row.

A Mexican national convicted of killing a Houston police officer in 1994, Tamayo, 46, has sought a reprieve from execution for 19 years, arguing that Texas police didn’t follow the Vienna Convention that requires them to give foreigners rapid access to consular officials from their home countries when arrested.

His position has won the support of his home government and the Obama administration, which worries that American citizens also might be denied consular access.

“Our consular visits help ensure U.S. citizens detained overseas have access to food and appropriate medical care, if needed, as well as access to legal representation,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a letter to Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry urging that the execution be delayed.

Perry has rejected any postponement.

"Texas Clemency Process Poor, But Good Enough for Government Work," is by Jordan Smith for the Austin Chronicle.

Federal Judge Lee Yeakel on Tuesday afternoon denied a bid by condemned Texas inmate Edgar Tamayo to stay his execution pending an inquiry into whether the clemency process undertaken by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles affords minimal due process protections required by law – a decision that cleared the way for tonight's planned execution.

Yeakel reviewed confidential materials provided to him by the BPP and concluded that there is nothing to indicate the Board does not "comply with the minimal constitutional-due-process requirements set forth by the United States Supreme Court," he wrote. Indeed, he wrote, there is nothing to suggest the BPP's procedures have undergone any significant change since Yeakel's colleague, Judge Sam Sparks, ruled on a similar challenge in 1998. In that case, brought by a Canadian national, Joseph Faulder, Sparks found that while it "is abundantly clear the Texas clemency procedure is extremely poor and certainly minimal," it nonetheless met the "minimal" standards required by the Supreme Court.

Shortly after Yeakel's ruling, the Texas BPP voted to deny Tamayo's bid for clemency. Unless Gov. Rick Perry steps in with a stay, the BPP vote and Yeakel ruling have cleared the way for Tamayo to be executed tonight, after 6pm.

Latin Times posts, "Edgar Tamayo Arias News: Mexican To Be Executed Despite Department of State Appeal," by Oscar Lopez.

Mr. Tamayo is to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday afternoon. The 46-year-old's father, Hector Tamayo, has declared the proceedings a violation of justice "it's unjust what they want to do to him knowing full well that he isn't guilty, that he didn't kill the policeman. He never said he killed him and nor was he assisted by the consulate nor any of the people that should help when someone commits a crime." 

Meanwhile a report from Reforma suggests that Mr. Tamayo Arias' himself is "calm and resigned" to his fate. Human rights groups have condemned the execution for not only violating the Vienna Convention but also for executing a man who has shown signs of mental retardation.

Houston's KPFT-FM will host Execution Watch on the web and its HD radio broadcast signal beginning at 6:00 p.m. (CST), this evening.

Earlier coverage of the case of Edgar Tamayo Arias begins at the link.  Related posts are in the foreign citizen and international law category indexes.

Latest Developments in the Edgar Tamayo Arias Case

"Mexico to Texas on convicted cop killer: Don't execute our citizen," is by Catherine E. Shoichet and Elwyn Lopez at CNN.

Mexico's government is trying to block the execution of a convicted cop killer in Texas this week, arguing that it would violate international law.

The case of Mexican citizen Edgar Tamayo Arias is the latest battle in a dispute over the rights of the foreign-born on American death rows. And U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it could put Americans abroad at risk.

Tamayo, 46, was convicted in the 1994 murder of a Houston police officer, whom he shot three times in the back of the head, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

His attorneys are scheduled to present oral arguments Tuesday, calling for a preliminary injunction to stop the state's governor and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles from considering Tamayo's clemency petition until the process is "adequate and fair," read a statement from his team.

Mexico's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that going ahead with Arias' executionby injection, scheduled for Wednesday, would violate international law because Tamayo wasn't advised of his right to receive consular assistance.

Fox News Latino posts, "Attorneys For Mexican On Texas Death Row Argue For Last-Minute Stay Of Execution," by Bill Vourvoulias.

Attorneys for Edgar Tamayo Arias, a Mexican citizen scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday at 6 p.m., are presenting last-minute arguments before the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. 

They are requesting an injunction against the Texas Board of Pardons and Governor Rick Perry to stay his execution until Tamayo’s petition for clemency can be heard by the board.

“We’re making two arguments that have never been considered by the board before,” Northwestern University’s Sandra Babcock, one of Tamayo’s lawyers and a frequent advocate against the death penalty, told Fox News Latino. “Whether the state can execute mentally retarded prisoners is one,” she said, pointing out that his legal team had an expert apply an IQ test and Tamayo scored well below normal.

“The other is the violation of his consular rights,” Babcock added. 

The 46-year-old Tamayo is a native of Miacatlán, in the Mexican state of Morelos, who was convicted of the January 1994 murder of Houston police office Guy P. Gaddis.

Tamayo’s case was one of 51 in the U.S. — 14 of them in Texas — that the International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s top judicial body, asked the U.S. to review in 2004 as part of an examination of possible violations of the Vienna Convention.

UPI posts, "Commission urges Texas to stay execution of Mexican national."

The scheduled execution of a mentally-disabled Mexican national violates international and U.S. law, a group urging Texas to halt the lethal injection says.

The execution of Edgar Tamayo Arias, scheduled to die Wednesday, puts at stake "Texas' respect for the Constitution of the United States and for international law," members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty wrote in an opinion piece published Sunday in the Latin Times.

Texas could violate the U.S. Constitution by executing Tamayo, convicted in 1994 of killing a Houston police officer, the article said, because he has been diagnosed with "mild mental retardation."

The authors of the article contend Texas violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to notify Mexican diplomatic officials of Tamayo's detention in 1994. Mexican authorities did not learn of his arrest until a week before his trial.

"Edgar Tamayo Arias News: International Commission Against The Death Penalty Condemns Execution," contains the OpEd written by Federico Mayor and Bill Richardson, members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty.  Here's the beginning of the OpEd:

Edgar Tamayo Arias, an inmate on death row in Texas, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on   January 22. At stake is not only the life of this 46-year-old Mexican national, but also Texas’ respect for the Constitution of the United States and for international law. It highlights how US states treat detained foreign nationals, especially those facing capital punishment.

The case has attracted widespread attention from several sources, including the US State Department, the Mexican government, the International Court of Justice and the international community.

Mr. Tamayo, a native of Mexico’s Morelos state who came to the US to find work when he was 19 years old, was sentenced to death in October 1994 for the murder of Houston police officer Guy Gaddis in January that year. We do not doubt the seriousness of the crime, but the execution of Mr. Tamayo would be a clear breach of US and international law.

As well as violating international law, Texas would be potentially violating the Constitution of the United States by executing a person with “mild mental retardation,” a condition with which Mr. Tamayo has been diagnosed.

In the spotlight is the importance of an international treaty, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Most countries, including the United States, are party to this convention, which provides a framework for consular relations between countries.

The Austin American-Statesman has published an OpEd by former Texas Governor Mark White, "Perry, Abbott should be true to their word in handling Tamayo case."

As a former Texas governor and attorney general, I know that Texans are proud and honorable people. As President George W. Bush used to say, “In Texas, you’re only as good as your word.” Right now our state and country’s reputation is resting on the word of two elected officials who I hope will keep Texas’ integrity intact. I urge them to fulfill promises they and previous Texas officials made about the cases of several Mexican nationals on our death row. One of these is the case of Edgar Tamayo, a Mexican national with mental disabilities scheduled to be executed Jan. 22.

Tamayo is one of ten Mexican nationals on Texas’ death row who, nearly a decade ago, were the subject of legal proceedings before the International Court of Justice — also known as the World Court. These cases caused international controversy because Texas authorities had violated their rights to have the Mexican Consulate notified of their detention under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty the United States became party to more than 40 years ago. This is the same treaty that ordinary Americans — and thousands of Texans — rely on for protection when they find themselves in trouble overseas. It’s the treaty that allows all Americans who are detained while traveling, working or studying abroad to contact the U.S. Consulate to help defend their rights.

If American states, including Texas, fail to honor Vienna Convention rights for citizens of other countries, then how can we expect those other countries to protect our own rights? So it’s vital that Texas fulfill its promises regarding Tamayo.

Earlier coverage of the case of Edgar Tamayo Arias begins at the link.

Continuing News Coverage From Ohio

"Execution spurs calls to suspend death penalty," is by Alan Johnson in today's Columbus Dispatch.

The troubled execution of convicted killer Dennis McGuire last week has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union and some state legislators to seek a moratorium on Ohio’s use of the death penalty.

And:

Dr. David Waisel, an anesthesiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, essentially predicted what would happen to McGuire in testimony offered by McGuire’s defense team at a hearing before the execution. He said McGuire would be “awake and actively conscious for up to five minutes” and was at “substantial, objectively intolerable risk for experiencing the agony and horrifying sensation of being unable to breathe for a relevant time, as he slowly suffocates to death.”

Officials of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and Gov. John Kasich have not commented.

The ACLU of Ohio wrote Kasich, urging him to “declare an immediate halt to executions in Ohio.”

“This is not about Dennis McGuire, his terrible crimes, or the crimes of others who await execution on Death Row,” the letter from ACLU Executive Director Christine Link and President Jack Guttenberg said. “It is about our duty as a society that sits in judgment of those who are convicted of crimes to treat them humanely and ensure their punishment does not violate the Constitution.”

"McGuire execution sparks anti-death penalty bills in Ohio," is the CBS News post.

Democrats state legislators are pushing for changes regarding the death penalty in Ohio after inmate Dennis McGuire gasped and convulsed violently during his execution last week which involved the use of a two-drug method for the first time in the United States.  

State Sen. Edna Brown has called for an immediate suspension of the death penalty in the state and said she plans to introduce legislation to abolish it altogether, reports Cleveland.com.

State Rep. Bob Hagan also recently announced his plan to introduce a bill that would require the governor and the state’s prisons chief to be present during all future executions in Ohio, according to the news site.

Both bills came on the heels of McGuire’s Jan. 16 execution. The 53-year-old McGuire, who was sentenced to death for raping and fatally stabbing a 22-year-old pregnant woman to death in 1989, took 26 minutes to die – making it the longest execution of the 53 carried out in Ohio since capital punishment resumed there 15 years ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.

"Shortage of lethal drugs, 'ugly' Ohio execution fuels battle over death penalty," is by Joseph Weber with material from Associated Press at Fox News.

A shortage of the lethal drugs used to administer the death penalty has re-ignited a battle over capital punishment which has pushed a few states to weigh execution alternatives -- even firing squads. 

The battle came to a head last week when Ohio used a new two-drug cocktail to execute an inmate, who had been convicted of raping and murdering a pregnant woman. The execution, though, took roughly 26 minutes and raised concerns about the ability of states to perform executions in a constitutional manner. 

While some death penalty foes continue to ramp up their opposition, other states are weighing alternative methods -- even firing squads -- to carry out lethal punishment. 

Right now, 32 states allow for lethal injections or other means of capital punishment. But when European pharmaceutical companies last year stopped selling the three-drug mix used for injections on ethical grounds, states began weighing their options.

Aljazeera America posts, "Local ACLU chapter in Ohio calls on governor to halt executions while Montana group is suing over protocol."

Prison authorities in two states are facing increased pressure to halt executions immediately after a controversial execution last week using a previously untested drug mix left a condemned man, Dennis McGuire, gasping and snorting for close to half an hour.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote to Ohio's governor, John Kasich, Sunday urging him to use his executive authority ahead of five scheduled executions in 2014 after McGuire's execution on Thursday.

It took McGuire 26 minutes to die after the chemicals — intravenous doses of the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone — began flowing into his body. McGuire was sentenced to die for raping and stabbing a pregnant newlywed to death in 1989, and his death was the longest execution of the 53 carried out in Ohio since capital punishment resumed 15 years ago.

Meanwhile, another group, the ACLU of Montana, is now suing Montana overs its execution method, which last year changed from a combination of three drugs to two. 

Though the drugs used in the Ohio execution are different from the ones called for in Montana's execution protocol, critics say the Ohio case illustrates the dangers of using untested drug combinations.

Earlier news coverage from the MLK holiday weekend includes:

"After a Prolonged Execution in Ohio, Questions Over ‘Cruel and Unusual’," by Erica Goode in the New York Times.

As the lethal drugs flowed into his veins in the Ohio death chamber, Dennis B. McGuire at first “went unconscious” and his body was still, his daughter, Amber McGuire, said Friday.

But a few minutes later, she said, she was horrified to see her father struggling, his stomach heaving, a fist clenching.

“He started making all these horrible, horrible noises, and at that point, that’s when I covered my eyes and my ears,” said Ms. McGuire, who watched the execution on Thursday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, near Lucasville. “He was suffering.”

Mr. McGuire’s execution, conducted with a new and untested combination of drugs, took about 25 minutes from the time the drugs were started to the time death was declared. The process, several witnesses said, was accompanied by movement and gasping, snorting and choking sounds.

"Family, experts: Ohio execution snafu points to flaws in lethal injection," by Tom Watkins at CNN.

No one may ever know for sure whether Ohio's execution of Dennis McGuire -- in a procedure during which he reportedly gasped, snorted and struggled -- was inhumane, but his family and medical and legal experts said Friday the ordeal points out fundamental flaws in the use of lethal injection.

"Prolonged execution renews debate over death by lethal injection," is Los Angeles Times coverage by Molly Hennessy-Fiske.

A few minutes before McGuire was put to death, Ohio's prison director, Gary Mohr, said he believed the state's planning would produce "a humane, dignified execution" consistent with the law. In pressing for the execution, state Assistant Atty. Gen. Thomas Madden had argued that condemned prisoners were "not entitled to a pain-free execution."

U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost sided with the state, but at the request of McGuire's lawyers, ordered officials to photograph and preserve drug vials, packaging and syringes.

Ohio and other states have been forced in recent years to use a new mix of drugs and reconsider lethal injection practices after manufacturers, under pressure from death penalty opponents, limited the distribution of drugs previously used in executions, prompting shortages.

"Unclear Future For Executions After Inmate's Slow Death," is an AP report filed by Andrew Welsh-Huggins and Kantele Franko.  It's via Huffington Post.

Whether McGuire felt any pain was unclear. His death — unconsciousness, followed by apparent obstructed breathing — followed the prediction of one state expert.

The question may center on states' tolerance for a constitutional method that is difficult to observe, said Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor and death penalty expert.

"How much will Ohio care, how much will the rest of the country care, that it seems that what we now have discovered is Ohio is using a method that gets the job done, but looks ugly," Berman said. "We don't know if it actually was ugly. We just know that it looked ugly."

States are in a bind for two main reasons: European companies have cut off supplies of certain execution drugs because of death-penalty opposition overseas. And states can't simply switch to other chemicals without triggering legal challenges from defense attorneys.

"There's only so many times you can say we're going to try a new method, or try something different, where at this point it's just going to invite a lot of skepticism," said Fordham University law professor and lethal injection expert Deborah Denno.

"Records show execution was longest for Ohio," is another AP report, also by Welsh-Huggins and Franko, via the Cherokee Tribune.

A convicted killer took 26 minutes to die during an execution in which he gasped repeatedly — the longest execution in Ohio since the state resumed capital punishment 15 years ago, records show.

Earlier coverage of the Ohio execution of Dennis McGuire begins with the preceding post.  Analysis and commentary in the next post, followed by more lethal injection news coverage from other jurisdictions.

Attorneys for Edgar Tamayo Arias File Federal Lawsuit

"Capital case raises questions of international consular rights," is by Jordan Smith in the Austin Chronicle.

On July 18, 2008, Gov. Rick Perry wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and to Attorney Gen­eral Michael Mukasey, thanking the pair for their written request of the month before. Rice and Mukasey had asked that Texas comply with an International Court of Justice order, to ensure that Mexican nationals on death row in Texas were afforded the legal protections assured to them by a now roughly five-decade-old international treaty.

A 1963 Vienna Convention provision ensures individuals have access to home-country consular officials when detained or charged with a crime while abroad – a provision that not only protects foreign nationals in the U.S., but also protects U.S. citizens abroad. Mexico sued the U.S. over violations of the provision, and in 2004 won a judgment from the ICJ in the Hague that concluded the U.S. had not met that obligation in the case of 51 Mexican nationals sentenced to death in the U.S.

One such person was Edgar Tamayo, convicted in Texas for the 1994 murder of Houston Police Officer Guy Gaddis. Tamayo shot Gaddis from the backseat of a patrol car while Gaddis was transporting him to jail. Tamayo had been picked up for a robbery outside a Houston nightclub; Gaddis missed finding the handgun hidden in Tamayo's waistband after a brief frisk.

Although President George W. Bush then asked the states to give effect to the ICJ ruling, Texas' highest criminal court dismissed the notion that the state was bound by the decision, and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently ruled that Congress would have to act to make the decision binding. Congressional action has not happened, and unless Perry – or perhaps a federal court – intervenes (possibly on a recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles) Tamayo will be executed on Jan. 22, without any court considering whether the failure of officials to inform him of his right to consular notification negatively impacted the outcome of his case.

The Latin Times reports, "Edgar Tamayo Arias Execution News: Lawyers To Sue Texas Governor Rick Perry," by Oscar Lopez.

Edgar Tamayo Arias' lawyers have filed a lawsuit in Federal Court against the Texas Board of Pardons and Governor Rick Perry, whom they accuse of 'Inadequate Clemency Proceedings.' Sandra Babcock, Tamayo Arias' lawyer and professor at Northwestern University's Law School stated that "The process of Clemency undertaken by the Texas Board of Pardons is surrounded by secrecy. Its members have refused to come together to discuss the petition brought forward by our client."

Edgar Tamayo Arias' legal team has stipulated that the Texas Board of Pardons has violated its own rules of a "just and legal process" in the proceedings: specifically, the Board is accused of refusing the defence team access to key documents presented by the prosecution which opposes Mr. Tamayo Arias' bid for clemency. The defence attorneys have asked for a suspension of 150 days in the hopes of halting the execution scheduled for January 22nd.

Babcock and her team had placed a petition for Executive Clemency to the Board of Pardons on the 11th of December 2013, however, the seven members of the Board have not voted on the matter. Babcock argued that the process of Clemency is the only forum which could grant Tamayo his right to revise the consequences of the "negligence of the state of Texas" by not informing him of his right to seek consular assistance at his arrest in 1994 for the murder of Police Officer Guy Gaddis in Houston.

"Mr. Tamayo was never informed of his right to contact the consulate, as is stipulated in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations; and, unlike other Mexicans already executed, he has not been granted any form of judicial review," Ms. Babcock argued. She also indicated that the Attorney General as well as Governor Perry had promised a review of cases like Mr. Tamayo's but "until now they have not kept their promise." The lawsuit filed today seeks to stop the Board from a vote before granting the defends team access to the prosecution's documents.

"Texas Set To Execute Cop-Killing Mexican Citizen," by  David Martin Davies for Fronteras.

Lawyers for Tamayo argue he was not given his rights under the Vienna Convention at the time of his arrest, that treaty stating everyone has a right to contact their consulate after being arrested in a foreign country.

Margaret Moran, National President of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said six years ago Texas had promised the courts it would review Tamayo case but it has not done so.

“The fact is that Governor [Rick] Perry and Attorney General [Greg] Abbott are breaking their promise by refusing at every turn to allow a review of this undisputed consular rights violation and the fact is that should they allow a review of this case he would not be executed," Moran said.

The state of Texas did received letters from both Secretary of State John Kerry and the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., both urging the court not the set an execution date. They say that allowing the execution would be detrimental to the United States-Mexico relationship.

Earlier coverage of Edgar Tamayo Arias' case begins at the link.

Two News Reports on Lethal Injection Drugs

New Statesman, of the U.K., post, "US prisons, foiled by an EU boycott, are turning to untested drugs in executions," by Ian Steadman.  It's also available in the New Republic.  Here's the beginning:

Pentobarbital and sodium thiopental are anaesthetics, used around the world by doctors and vets on all kinds of patients in a variety of cases. They are also used to render prisoners unconscious in the ten US states that use lethal injection to execute their condemned.

That is, as long as they can obtain the drug. Since pharmaceutical company Hospira stopped manufacturing sodium thiopental in early 2011, there hasn’t been a domestic producer of either drug within the US. American prisons rely on either one of the drugs as the first of the three used in the standard cocktail given to those due to be executed - the others being pancuronium bromide, which paralyses all of the muscles in the body, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

A couple of years later, and prisons have started to use up the stockpiles, bought from before production ceased. The result is the rise of new, untested drugs in execution cocktails.

"Chilling Testimony From Death Row Executioners Exposes How Rotten Our System Really is," by Laura Dimon at PolicyMic.  There are infographics in the report, which brings together some excellent journalistic work.

At some point for Fred Allen, something snapped. He’d done one too many. He broke.

Years had gone by, but he could still picture the eyes of every inmate he'd helped tie down, restrain with multiple straps so that the execution team could slide needles into his veins, enabling deadly chemicals to surge through his body.

The chilling Sound Portraits radio documentary from 2000, "Witness to an Execution," won a Peabody Award that year, and there is no question why. It's unnerving, eye-opening, and massively instrumental in illustrating the process, the nuances, and the anatomy of an execution — something we're far too unfamiliar with.

And:

Often, when we think about the capital punishment, we think about the person getting executed (was he a monster?), we might think about his lawyers, and we most certainly think about the victim and the victim's family. Will they watch the execution? Do they want to? 

But we rarely think about the people who have to carry out the process itself. It's no wonder Jeffrey Toobin opened his recent New Yorker piece with, "Pity the modern executioner. The Supreme Court has burdened him with obligations that reflect considerable ambivalence about his profession."

Earlier reporting on lethal injection issues begins with news from Missouri, Ohio, and Oklahoma.  Related posts are in the international and lethal injection category indexes.

World Attention Beginning to Focus on Edgar Tamayo Arias' Case

"Mexican Man On Death Row In Texas Reunites With Family Days Before Planned Execution," is by Bill Vourvoulias for Fox News Latino.

Edgar Tamayo Arias, 46, a Mexican national scheduled to be executed in Texas by lethal injection on Jan. 22, apparently won't be alone when his final day comes.

Members of the death row inmate's family — some of whom he hasn't seen in 19 years — arrived in Houston on Sunday. According to Mexican press reports, relatives are scheduled to meet with Tamayo on Monday afternoon.

Tamayo is a native of Miacatlán, in the Mexican state of Morelos, who was convicted of the January 1994 murder of Houston police office Guy P. Gaddis.

He was put on death row, but his sentence was only the beginning of an extremely complicated legal case.

Tamayo’s case was one of 51 in the U.S. — 14 of them in Texas — that the International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s top judicial body, asked the United States to review the judgment in 2004 as part of an examination of possible violations of the Vienna Convention.

Tamayo claims he was never informed that he had the right to contact the Mexican consulate.

Since then, various Mexican officials, including the country’s foreign minister, the governor of Morelos and the country’s ambassador to the United States have intervened on his behalf, trying to get Texas to stay his execution and co-operate with the International Court.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have pushed for the states to do so as well, but, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that without a federal law directing states to act on requests from the International Court, they were not compelled to comply.

Last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrote a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and state Attorney General Greg Abbott, saying that the execution could have serious diplomatic repercussions.

Today's Houston Chronicle publishes the OpEd, "Define case by the Golden Rule," by Gabriel Salguero.  He's president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.

For the thousands of our fellow-citizens who serve as missionaries, clergy or aid workers in foreign lands, few safeguards are more important than their right to rapid consular contact if they are detained by the local authorities.

The simple act of sharing their religious beliefs can place them at risk of detention by repressive governments. Confronted by an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile legal system, prompt access to the assistance that only U.S. consulates can provide is their one secure lifeline to the outside world - and to eventual freedom.

Our consulates demand the humane treatment of jailed Americans; they notify their families back home, provide legal information to detainees and monitor the proceedings against them to ensure fair outcomes. These essential rights of consular assistance and access are enshrined in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty binding on the United States and 175 other countries worldwide.

Hardly a week goes by without a story in the news about another American wrongfully detained abroad. Most of those cases are speedily resolved, but the ongoing ability of our government to intervene effectively depends heavily on the extent to which we honor the Vienna Convention rights of foreigners here at home.

This delicate equilibrium of mutual treaty compliance is now threatened by a looming execution in Texas. Mexican national Edgar Tamayo was sentenced to death for the 1994 killing of Houston police officer Guy P. Gaddis, following an undeniable violation of the Vienna Convention that prevented his consulate from assisting in his trial defense.

Well after the trial, consular support led to previously undiscovered evidence of Tamayo's mental retardation and brain damage, mitigating factors that could have persuaded the jury to sentence him instead to life imprisonment. No court has reviewed that new evidence and, unless Texas authorities act on their former promise to support meaningful review of his Vienna Convention claim, Tamayo will be executed without any determination of how the treaty violation might have undermined his right to a fair trial.

Earlier coverage of Edgar Tamayo Arias' case begins at the link.

Mexico & Texas

"Death Penalty Puts Texas at Odd with Mexican Government, Human Rights Groups," is the report at Latino Post.  Here's the beginning:

The impending execution in Texas of a Mexican citizen has civil rights organizations up in arms, as well as a renewed call from Mexico for better legal services and access to diplomatic rights for their citizens who are detained in the United States, and Texas in particular.

Edgar Arias Tamayo, 46, is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 22 as a result of a conviction for the murder of a Houston police officer in 1994. However, as has been noted by many judicial watches, Tamayo was not notified of his right to access Mexican consular services when he was arrested, and the Mexican authorities were not aware of his arrest and detention until one week before his trial.

His case is one of more than 50 which was brought to the attention of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Mexico sought the courts assistance on behalf of Mexican citizens jailed in the U.S. who had not been afforded their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 24 April 1963.

The court found in Mexico's favor on six points, noted the U.S. agreement and participation in the convention and ordered the U.S. "shall provide, by means of its own choosing, review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence, so as to allow full weight to be given to the violation of the rights set forth in the Convention, taking account of paragraphs 138 to 141 of this Judgment."

There is also Spanish Language media coverage of the case:

La Prensa posts, "Condena AI ejecución del mexicano."

"Pena de morte:mexicano será 29º estrangeiro executado nos EUA," at PB Agora.

Earlier coverage of this international law dispute begins at the link.

Related posts are in the foreign citizen and international law category indexes.

An Anesthesiologist Speaks Out Against Lethal Injection

"Why I'm for a moratorium on lethal injections," is the OpEd by Dr. Joel Zivot, M.D., in today's USA Today.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

I am an anesthesiologist, and I possess the knowledge on how to render any person unconscious. You may call it sleep, but it is nothing of the sort.

I learned my craft with the use of sodium thiopental, a drug in the barbiturate class. To witness it for the first time, to watch as it raced into a vein, and in a moment, rendered the patient unconscious, was nothing short of astounding. In those moments, my job was to be reassuring and comforting, for I can imagine no greater moment of trust between a doctor and a patient.

Sodium thiopental is no longer in my pharmacology toolbox. Hospira, the last company to manufacture the drug, stopped making it to protest its use in carrying out the death penalty.

So other drugs have been substituted. One of them will be used Tuesday, when Oklahoma is scheduled to execute by lethal injection Johnny Dale Black, who was convicted of murder.

An executioner and the condemned are not the same as a doctor and a patient, though it is easy to see how similarities can be drawn. Had this supposed similarity not been noticed, the death penalty in the U.S. would likely not have survived. Instead, lethal injection created an illusion of humane, professional execution. But the executioners are not doctors, and it's been well established that the executions themselves are not humane.

Related posts are in the physician and lethal injection category indexes.

Another Mexican Citizen Facing Texas Execution

The New York Times reports, "Texas Plan to Execute Mexican May Harm U.S. Ties Abroad, Kerry Says."  It's by Manny Fernandez of the Houston Bureau.

Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning of the article:

The scheduled execution next month of a Mexican national by the State of Texas threatens to damage relations between the United States and Mexico and complicate the ability of the United States to help Americans detained overseas, Secretary of State John F. Kerry has warned Texas officials.

The Mexican, Edgar Arias Tamayo, 46, was convicted of shooting and killing a Houston police officer who was taking him to jail after a robbery in 1994. Mr. Tamayo, who was in the nation illegally, was not notified of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate, in violation of an international treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. That violation, an international tribunal’s order for his case to be reviewed and a judge’s recent decision to set Mr. Tamayo’s execution for Jan. 22, are now at the center of a controversy that has attracted the attention of the State Department and the Mexican government.

Despite Mr. Kerry’s involvement, there has been no sign that Texas officials plan to delay the execution. On Wednesday, Mr. Tamayo’s lawyers asked Gov. Rick Perry to grant him a 30-day reprieve and petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute his death sentence to life in prison. They are using Mr. Kerry’s letter, sent to Texas officials in September, to highlight the international issues at stake.

In 2004, the top judicial body of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, ordered the United States to review the convictions of Mr. Tamayo and 50 other Mexican nationals whose Vienna Convention rights, it said, were violated and who were sentenced to death in the United States. The international court, also known as the World Court, found that United States courts had to determine in each case whether the violation of consular rights harmed the defendant. In the nine years since the World Court’s decision, no United States court has reviewed the Vienna Convention issues in Mr. Tamayo’s case, said Maurie Levin, one of his lawyers.

In a letter sent to Mr. Perry and the Texas attorney general, Mr. Kerry took the unusual step of weighing in on a state death-penalty case, arguing that Mr. Tamayo’s execution would affect the ability of the United States to comply with the international court’s order in what is known as the Avena case. The World Court’s judgment is binding on the United States, Mr. Kerry wrote, and complying with it ensures that the federal government can rely on Vienna Convention protections when aiding Americans detained abroad.

“I have no reason to doubt the facts of Mr. Tamayo’s conviction, and as a former prosecutor, I have no sympathy for anyone who would murder a police officer,” Mr. Kerry wrote, describing his concern as a “process issue” that could impact the way Americans are treated overseas. “Our consular visits help ensure U.S. citizens detained overseas have access to food and appropriate medical care, if needed, as well as access to legal representation.”

Related posts are in the foreign citizen and international law category indexes.  You'll find coverage there of earlier Texas executions involving Mexican citizens who had not been advised of their consular rights.

Around the World, A Vanishing Death Penalty

"Global trend to end death penalty is accelerating dramatically," is GlobalPost OpEd written by Federico Mayor and Bill Richardson.  Mayor is a former Minister of Education and Science of Spain; Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, who signed that state's repeal legislation into law.  Both are now members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty.

Here's the beginning:

Which country will be the last to abolish the death penalty?

Not so long ago, posing such a question would have seemed overly optimistic at best, and naïve at worst. But as we mark Human Rights Day on Dec. 10 — the 65th anniversary of the United Nations’ adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — we do so knowing that the global outlook is shifting rapidly. The tide has turned irreversibly in the long battle against the death penalty, an inherently cruel and deeply flawed punishment that has done incalculable damage to countless individual lives and whole societies.

The global trend toward abolition has accelerated dramatically in recent years. As recently as the late 1970s, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Yet today, according to the UN, some 150 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

As understanding has grown that capital punishment is an abhorrence unworthy of a civilized society, government after government — from all major regions, cultures and religions — has rejected it.

Related posts are in the death penalty in other countries, international, and OpEd category indexes.

Poland Protests Connecticut Inmate's Death Sentence

"Poland's president challenges state's death penalty," is by Daniel Tepfer at CT Post.

In what could spark an international incident, the president of Poland is demanding the state not execute a former Trumbull man for the terrifying 2006 murders of a city woman, her 9-year-old daughter and a Milford landscaper.

"We strongly believe the death penalty should not be imposed," Agniestka Torres, vice consul and head of the legal section for the Polish consulate general in New York, told Hearst Connecticut Newspapers. "It doesn't matter what crimes he committed."

The government of the Republic of Poland this week notified Gov. Malloy and the Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane that it objects to Richard Roszkowski -- whose parents were Polish -- getting the death penalty.

Torres said the appeal comes directly from their president, Bronislaw Komorowski, who recently signed a law banning the death penalty in all circumstances.

Roszkowski was born in the U.S., but both his parents, who are now dead, emigrated from Poland and Roszkowski visited Poland when he was a child.

"As far as we are concerned Mr. Roszkowski is a Polish national and is covered by our laws," Torres said.

"Poland protests death penalty of Connecticut inmate," is AP coverage, via the Day.

The president of Poland is demanding that Connecticut withdraw the death penalty against a former Trumbull man convicted of murder in the deaths of a Bridgeport woman, her 9-year-old daughter and a Milford man

The Polish government notified Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane last week it objects to the death penalty sentence imposed on Richard Roszkowski. His parents were Polish and Poland's government considers him a Polish national covered by that country's laws.

And:

Connecticut has abolished the death penalty, but it still applies to 10 men on death row.

Earlier coverage from Connecticut begins at the link.

Missouri Prepares to Execute

"State execution to resume after switch to other drug," is the AP report, via the Springfield News-Leader.

A Missouri execution postponed last month amid debate over the state’s choice of execution drug is set to take place Wednesday.

Allen Nicklasson was convicted in the 1994 slaying of Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond, who stopped to help when a car used by Nicklasson and two others broke down on Interstate 70. Another man in the car, Dennis Skillicorn, was executed in 2009.

The execution is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. at the prison in Bonne Terre.

Nicklasson was supposed to be executed Oct. 23, when Missouri planned to use the anesthetic propofol for the first time. The plan drew concerns from the medical community because most of the drug is made in Europe, and the anti-death penalty European Union had threatened to limit export if propofol was used in an execution.

As a result, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon halted the execution.

The article also notes a vigil that will be held tomorrow:

The Springfield chapter of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty will hold a vigil Tuesday to protest Wednesday’s scheduled execution of Missouri death row inmate Allen Nicklasson.  The vigil will be from noon to 1 p.m. on Park Central Square in downtown Springfield.

 The Columbia Daily Tribune publishes an OpEd, "Execution is never the answer," by Jeff Stack of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation.

While millions of people around the world will celebrate Human Rights Day on Tuesday, Dec. 10, Missouri officials might be engaged in bloody activities ill-fitting the occasion. Workers at the Bonne Terre prison have been ordered to begin preparations that day to execute Allen Nicklasson, just after midnight Wednesday morning.

Perhaps state officials are oblivious both to the event and to the evolving global pattern toward repeal. It might be tempting to cast off human beings who have committed horrible crimes — such as Nicklasson — but with his lethal injection, Missouri would only be compounding the pattern of abuse and societal neglect he has endured since infancy. He would be the 70th person executed since 1989; Missouri is the fifth-most prolific serial-killing U.S. state. Officials would better serve our people by making Joseph Franklin's November execution — he was killed while legal appeals were still pending — the last in our state's history, leading Missouri upon a more enlightened path.

Sixty-five years ago on Dec. 10, the United States and 47 other nations in the United Nations' General Assembly unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II and its horrific atrocities. Among the declaration's planks, Article 3 says, "Everyone has the right to life."

Most nations seem intent on honoring that noble commitment. Globally, abolitionists by law or practice now outnumber executing ones by a 2-1 margin. Six U.S. states have abolished the death penalty in as many years, and both the number of death sentences and executions nationwide have declined almost every year since 1999.

Earlier coverage from Missouri begins at the link.

Missouri Lethal Injection News

"Missouri won't reveal where it's getting drug for executions," is by Tony Rizzo of the Kansas City Star.  It's via McClatchy DC.

It's no secret that pentobarbital, Missouri's new execution drug, is an effective killer.

Veterinarians use it to euthanize cats and dogs every day, and it has been employed as the sole drug in 30 U.S. executions this year.

What is secret is the name of the compounding pharmacy that will supply pentobarbital as Missouri's lethal injection agent.

That secrecy, along with a growing concern about the unregulated nature of such pharmacies, could propel the state into a protracted legal fight before it can carry out its first execution since early 2011.

A similar situation in Georgia over the summer prompted a stay of execution after a judge found that putting an inmate to death with secretly compounded pentobarbital raised crucial constitutional questions.

"There are a lot of serious problems with all of this," said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York who has done extensive research on issues surrounding lethal injection across the country.

In an article for the Georgetown Law Journal, Denno said that the "historically dismal safety standards and haphazard daily practices" of some compounding pharmacies "all but invite lethal injection challenges."

Also from Missouri, Associated Press reports, "New execution date set for condemned inmate."  It's via the Columbia Daily Tribune.

A Missouri execution postponed last month amid debate over the state's choice of execution drug was rescheduled yesterday for Dec. 11.

The Missouri Supreme Court set the new date for the execution of Allen Nicklasson, who was convicted in the 1994 slaying of a good Samaritan, spokeswoman Beth Riggert said. The execution is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. at the prison in Bonne Terre.

Nicklasson was supposed to be executed Oct. 23, when Missouri planned to use the anesthetic propofol for the first time. The plan drew concerns from the medical community because most of the drug is made in Europe, and the anti-death penalty European Union had threatened to limit export if propofol was used in an execution. As a result, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon stepped in and halted the execution. Days later, the Missouri Department of Corrections announced a switch to pentobarbital. Pentobarbital is a sedative used as an execution drug by 13 other states.

Nicklasson was convicted of killing Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond, who stopped to help when a car used by Nicklasson and two others broke down on Interstate 70 in Callaway County. Another man in the car, Dennis Skillicorn, was executed in 2009.

Earlier coverage of Missouri lethal injection issues begins at the link.  Related posts are in the lethal injection category index.

Executions Stall as States Seek Different Drugs

That's the title of Manny Fernandez' New York Times report on the current state of lethal injection from page 1 of the Saturday edition.  Here's the beginning:

Florida ran out of its primary lethal-injection drug last month and relied on a new drug that no state had ever used for an execution. At Ohio’s next scheduled execution, the state is planning to use a two-drug combination for the first time. Last month in Texas, Michael Yowell became that state’s first inmate executed using a drug made by a lightly regulated pharmacy that usually produces customized medications for individual patients.

The decision by manufacturers to cut off supplies of drugs, some of which had been widely used in executions for decades, has left many of the nation’s 32 death penalty states scrambling to come up with new drugs and protocols. Some states have already changed their laws to keep the names of lethal-drug suppliers private as a way to encourage them to provide drugs.

The uncertainty is leading to delays in executions because of legal challenges, raising concerns that condemned inmates are being inadequately anesthetized before being executed and leading the often-macabre process of state-sanctioned executions into a continually shifting legal, bureaucratic and procedural terrain.

In the Florida execution, which used the new drug midazolam as part of a three-drug mix, The Associated Press reported that the inmate, William Happ, appeared to remain conscious longer and made more body movements after losing consciousness than those executed with the old formula.

“We have seen more changes in lethal injection protocols in the last five years than we have seen in the last three decades,” said Deborah W. Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School and a death penalty expert. “These states are just scrambling for drugs, and they’re changing their protocols rapidly and carelessly.”

Earlier coverage of Florida lethal injection issues begins at the link.  Also available, more national coverage of lethal injection drugs.

Mother Jones on the New Lethal Injection Drugs & Sources

"New Lethal Injections Could Cause Extreme Pain, Make Deaths 'Drag on' for Hours," is Molly Redden's report for Mother Jones.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

Next Thursday, executioners for the state of Ohio will inject convicted murderer Ronald Phillips with a combination of midazolam and hydromorphone—two drugs that have never before been used in a lethal injection. The two-drug cocktail may have its intended effect, and Phillips may slip into a state of amnesia before quietly dying. But hydromorphone, a powerful painkiller, is not designed to kill, and physicians have no idea how much hydromorphone it will take to end Phillips' life. It's possible that Phillips' execution will fail, or drag on for hours, his sedative wearing off as he vomits, seizes, or slowly suffocates.

A week later, on November 20, Missouri will perform a similar experiment on death row inmate Joseph Paul Franklin. Missouri will become the third state, after Texas and South Dakota, to inject an inmate with pentobarbital synthesized in a compounding pharmacy—a type of drug manufacturer that is not subject to Food and Drug Administration safety regulations. The pentobarbital may simply stop Franklin's heart, as intended. But if it is contaminated by tiny particles—as drugs manufactured by compounding pharmacies often are—the insides of Franklin's veins will feel as though they're being scraped with sandpaper as he dies, warns David Waisel, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School.

Over the past several years, international drugmakers and the European Union have banned the sale of drugs for use in executions. This has made the components of the Supreme Court-approved three-drug cocktail that states traditionally used to kill inmates—composed of a sedative that left the inmate unable to feel pain, a second drug that works as a paralytic agent, and a third drug that stops his heart—progressively harder to obtain. To overcome this hurdle, Ohio will try to kill an inmate with a never-before-used combinations of drugs, and Missouri will become the third state to execute an inmate using drugs from an unregulated pharmacy. But as Missouri and Ohio's unprecedented executions approach, medical and legal experts say that they are hard put to predict how much pain these new drug protocols will inflict on death row inmates, or how long convicts may linger before the drugs finally kill them.

Earlier coverage of Missouri and Ohio lethal injection issues, at the links.  You can also jump to recent national roundups of lethal injection issues.

Cruel and Unusable

That's the title of a report in the Economist subtitled, "A technical hitch stays the executioner’s needle."  It's also reprinted in today's Chicago Tribune.

Getting hold of drugs for executions is growing harder. Pentobarbital was introduced as an alternative to sodium thiopental, a barbiturate used alone or in combination with two other drugs for executions—and not for much else. The EU restricts its sales. Britain bans its export. Its American maker stopped making it in 2011.

Shortages call for creative solutions. As old stocks expire, several states have turned to “compounding pharmacies”—speciality suppliers that mix their own drugs from the raw active ingredients—to obtain new drugs. This is how Missouri plans to get hold of pentobarbital.

Yet using such rough-and-ready suppliers is controversial. In 2006 the FDA examined a sample of drugs from compounding pharmacies and found a third of them unusable. In past years up to a quarter of samples have failed state tests in Missouri, though failure rates have fallen recently. Contamination at a compounder in Massachusetts caused a deadly meningitis outbreak last year.

Earlier coverage of Missouri lethal injection issues begins at the link.  Related posts are in the lethal injection category index.

Also available, more recent news from Missouri involves an exoneration.

Back in Business?

That's the title of the Tennessean's Sunday editorial, subtitled, "TN officials pursue lethal drug despite daunting problems with death penalty."

Exhibiting a disturbing hubris, Tennessee correctional officials have quickly set dates to execute two men on death row early next year, based on the state’s decision that it will change its lethal drug of choice.

Even if it made sense for Tennessee to get back into the practice of capital punishment, an assumption that is losing ground with each passing year, correctional officials are leaping into uncertain territory by planning to use the anesthetic pentobarbital to put to death first Billy Ray Irick in January and then Nickolus Johnson in April.

Ohio and Texas switched to pentobarbital and weathered some court challenges. Its predecessor was a three-drug cocktail designed to make the inmate unconscious before the lethal drugs ended his life. The efficacy of pentobarbital seems to be based on its veterinary use to euthanize animals.

And:

Where Tennessee plans to get pentobarbital, we have no way of knowing, now that the General Assembly has passed a law allowing the state to keep its supplier confidential, infringing on Tennessee’s open-records law in the process.

So, if you feel that as a resident of Tennessee and a taxpayer, you should be able to know how the state chooses to put people to death, this year, you have lost that right. Of course, that doesn’t mean that a compounding pharmacy with a conscience won’t violate that confidentiality.

The truly lethal combination in this is the brazen rush to get executions in full swing, mixed with officials’ state of denial about the many reasons that the death penalty is failing us.

Earlier coverage from Tennessee begins at the link.

Lethal Injection Drug News From Nebraska

"Nebraska researches 'Death Penalty' drug," is by Brent Martin of Nebraska Radio Network.  It's via KMA-AM/FM.

Nebraska will be looking at a number of options to maintain the death penalty.

Nebraska has been blocked from carrying out executions, because it cannot get adequate supplies of sodium thiopental, the drug the state would use as an anesthetic. No longer produced domestically, the drug has become increasingly difficult to obtain from European manufacturers who have been blocked from selling it for use in executions.

Missouri has announced it will change its death penalty protocol after it became difficult to receive propofol, an anesthetic used in its three-drug protocol. The state now will use the sedative pentobarbital and is considering a switch to a one-drug protocol.

Attorney General Jon Bruning says Nebraska will be review the move by other states toward a one-drug protocol to carry out lethal injection, rather than the three-drug method now on the books.

And:

The state switched to lethal injection after a 2009 Nebraska Supreme Court ruling declared the electric chair to be cruel and unusual punishment. Nebraska last carried out an execution in 1997. Eleven prisoners now reside on death row.

Earlier coverage from Nebraska begins at the link; also available, coverage of Nebraska lethal injection issues.

Additional Details From Missouri

"Gov. Nixon received health concerns over execution drug," is Chris Blank's AP report, via the Southeastern Missourian.

Health-care workers, medical groups and even a few patients pressured Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon before he halted what would have been the first execution with the anesthetic propofol.

The anticipated use of propofol in administering the death penalty fueled concerns that the anti-death penalty European Union could limit its export. Before he halted a planned October execution, Nixon's office received several dozen letters and messages asking him to put off the execution and to order development of a new death penalty protocol.

Nixon's office provided The Associated Press with correspondence it received before the decision. Many messages to the governor took little position on the death penalty and instead focused on propofol. The state Department of Corrections announced Tuesday executions now will use the sedative pentobarbital, which the Death Penalty Information Center says is used by 13 states.

The Missouri State Medical Association said in a letter to Nixon that propofol is a "critically important medicine" that the American Society of Anesthesiologists estimates is used in 95 percent of surgical procedures requiring an anesthetic. The medical association said tens of millions of Americans benefit annually from it.

And:

Roughly 85 percent of the U.S. supply of propofol is made in Europe by the German company Fresenius Kabi. The EU bans trade in goods that can be used for executions and was reviewing whether to make propofol subject to the rule.

Markus Loning, human-rights commissioner for the German federal government, wrote a Sept. 30 letter urging Nixon to refrain from using the drug. Loning said turning to propofol for an execution would "almost certainly lead to strict export controls. Subsequently there would also be a severe shortage of Propofol in the United States for medical purposes."

Earlier coverage of Missouri lethal injection issues begins at the link.

National Lethal Injection Roundup

There is national and state lethal injection news today, as well as editorials.  I'll break them down into bits, starting with two major overview articles.

NPR's Satuday edition of All Things Considered broadcast, "Lacking Lethal Injection Drugs, States Find Untested Backup."  There is audio at the link.  It was prepared by NPR staff and program host Arun Rath.

Brendan Farrington witnessed the execution of William Happ for the Associated Press. He described the scene in the viewing room.

BRENDAN FARRINGTON: The room has four rows of chairs, about 10 chairs in each row. The last row is slightly elevated, and that's where media witnesses are. It's a very solemn, serious, quiet atmosphere. There's no talking. They bring the witnesses in, and there's a screen across a long, rectangular window. And when they're ready to begin, the screen slowly rises. The person conducting the execution will announce that the sentence is about to be carried out, tell this to the condemned and asks if he has any last words.

In this case, William Happ gave a fairly lengthy final words. He admitted he committed the crime and expressed shame for it and said that, you know, he hopes that God forgives him, and he realizes that the family probably could not.

RATH: At 6 p.m. sharp, the execution began. Since the drug midazolam was being used for the first time in an execution, Farrington was watching closely to see how it would work.

FARRINGTON: While it wasn't dramatically different than previous executions, it did seem like it took him longer to lose consciousness. Of the other three executions I've seen, the condemned, once the procedure begins, they'll go under fairly quickly. And once their eyes closed, they usually stay closed. In Happ's case, his eyes were still opening two, three, four minutes into the process. Once they closed, about 10 minutes in, his head started moving kind of just around, and there was some motion.

RATH: There is no way to know if William Happ was in pain during his last moments. But some anesthesia experts have expressed concern that midazolam and other untested sedatives could fail to work properly during an execution. If that happened, condemned prisoners could die slowly or painfully, a violation of legal guidelines for executions.

National Journal posts, "No Drugs, No Executions: The End of the Death Penalty," by Dustin Volz.  There is an infographic at the link.

In a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott last month describing the changes to its lethal-injection protocol, Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Mike Crews wrote that "the procedure has been reviewed and is compatible with evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society, the concepts of the dignity of man, and advances in science, research, pharmacology, and technology. He added: "The process will not involve unnecessary lingering or the unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain and suffering. The foremost objective of the lethal injection process is a human and dignified death."

A department spokeswoman confirmed the switch was made because Florida's cache of pentobarbital expired. She declined to give specifics about how the updated lethal-injection process was vetted to ensure it qualifies as "a humane and dignified death."

"The department is not going to go into any detail about how or why the protocol was designed," Misty Cash, the spokeswoman, told National Journal. "Those decisions are exempt from public record because they could impact the safety and security of inmates and officers who are involved in that process."

Florida's refusal to disclose its process for selecting its new drug bolsters critics who claim it and other states are willing to risk violating generally accepted standards of decency in their pursuit of a reliable method of execution.

"Every time a state changes their method of execution, they lose credibility about a procedure that should be as humane as we can make it. Everything that states are doing now goes against that very grain," said Deborah Denno, a capital-punishment expert who opposes the death penalty. "They choose drugs because they are available, not because they know anything about those drugs."

Texas's changes to its lethal-injection protocol illustrates that reality.

Earlier coverage of the Florida execution begins at the link.  You can also jump to two other recent overviews of lethal injection issues.  Related posts are in the lethal injection category index. 

The next posts will focus on state li issues.

 

Additional LI Drug Coverage From Missouri

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch updates its coverage of the drug change with, "Missouri switches to new lethal injection drug," by Jeremy Kohler.

Missouri’s effort to mete out capital punishment continued to evolve Tuesday with a plan to carry out executions with a drug commonly used to euthanize pets.

The Missouri Department of Corrections announced a plan to use lethal injections of the sedative pentobarbital after Gov. Jay Nixon postponed an execution over concerns about using a common hospital anesthetic drug, propofol.

"Franklin execution to be carried out as scheduled using pentobarbital," is by Jessica Machetta at MissouriNet.

Missouri’s last execution was that of Martin Link on February 9, 2011.  Nicklasson’s co-defendant, Dennis Skillicorn, was executed May 25, 2009.  They are the only executions the state has carried out since 2005. Executions are carried out at the state prison in Bonne Terre.

The Atlantic's Wire posts, "Missouri Turns to Compounding Pharmacies for Lethal Injection Drugs," by Abby Ohlheiser.

Facing a shortage of mass-produced drugs, Missouri will rely on a private compounding pharmacy to make the state's lethal injection drug. That means the state will resume executing prisoners after Gov. Jay Nixon put the capital punishment schedule on hold earlier this month. The drug, pentobarbital, is used in 13 other states to execute prisoners. Facing pressure from several different groups, Nixon had backed away from a controversial plan announced earlier this spring to start using propofol for executions, a drug that's never been used in capital punishment before. 

Other states have been more successful in attempts to experiment with new, untested drugs for executions to make up for dwindling supplies from large manufacturers. Florida tried out a new lethal drug last week during the execution of William Happ, who is now the first person to die from a state-sanctioned lethal injection of midazolam hydrochloride. But Missouri faced additional pressure from doctors in the state against its decision to use a new drug in lethal injections. Here's, in part, why: propofol is an extremely popular anesthetic in the U.S., and its top manufacturer is German. In response to Missouri's flirtation with the drug for executions, many worried that the E.U. would impose sanctions on its export to America, limiting the supply across the board. Missouri ended up promising to return its European supply of propofol to ease concerns that it could be used in the U.S. for capital punishment.

Earlier coverage of Missouri lethal injection issues begins with yesterday's Department of Corrections announcement.

Drug Makers and the Death Penalty

New Statesman publishes the OpEd, "Can Big Pharma end the death penalty in the US?" It's by Clare Algar, executive director of Reprieve.  It's also available at the New Republic.  Here's the beginning:

A man walks into a pharmacy with an execution warrant and is given the drugs necessary for execution by lethal injection. This sounds like a very bad joke, but is in fact what is going on at the moment in Ohio. And here is why.

Thirty two states retain the death penalty in the US, but a new obstacle is making it increasingly difficult for them to carry it out. Pharmaceutical companies are taking a moral stand. The manufacturers of the drugs required by state departments of corrections for executions are saying they will not allow their products to be employed in this way. Manufacturers in the UK, US, Denmark, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and India have taken steps to prevent their drugs being used in executions.

This has had an astonishing effect. Shortages of lethal injection drugs and attendant litigation have resulted in moratoria - an official halting of executions - in Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee. Historically, state entities do not move directly from having the death penalty to abolition. They begin with a moratorium on killing and then, when the population has grown unused to executions, the death penalty can be abolished. Of the states mentioned above, Maryland abolished the death penalty this year and abolition bills have been put forward in Nebraska, Colorado and California. California came very close to passing its abolition bill - voting against by 52 to 48. Meanwhile, the media coverage of the issue has exposed the unsavoury details of the execution process and created opportunities for serious debate about abolition.

Earlier coverage of problems with the supply of lethal injection drugs begins at the link. 

Related posts are in the international and lethal injection indexes.

Florida to Execute Today Using Untried Drug

Reuters posts, "Florida to execute man using untried drug for lethal injection," by Bill Cotterell.  It's via GlobalPost.

An execution scheduled in Florida on Tuesday will be the first using the drug midazolam hydrochloride despite concerns it might not work as promised and could inflict cruel and unusual punishment on a death row inmate.

Midazolam, typically used by doctors for sedation, will be the first of three drugs pumped into William Happ as part of a lethal injection cocktail designed to induce unconsciousness, paralysis and death by cardiac arrest.

The first of the drugs administered as part of the lethal injection "protocol" in Florida has long been the barbiturate pentobarbital. But Florida, and other death penalty states that use a trio of drugs as part of their injection procedures, have been running out of pentobarbital since its manufacturer clamped a ban on its use in future executions.

The 51-year-old Happ, who has abandoned his appeals and said he is ready to die, was condemned for the 1986 abduction, rape and murder of Angie Crowley, whose body was found on a canal bank near Crystal River in central Florida.

"This is somewhat of an experiment on a living human being," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said Monday.

"The three-drug process depends on the first drug rendering the inmate unconscious and, if he is only partially unconscious, the inmate could be experiencing extreme pain," he added. "Because the second drug paralyzes him, he would be unable to cry out or show that he's in pain."

Just last week, Missouri postponed an execution set for October 23 due to uncertainty about using a different drug, propofol, as a substitute for pentobarbital.

"Florida's use of new drug in execution spurs ethical concerns," is the Gainesville Sun report by Kristine Crane.

The Florida Department of Corrections is planning to use a lethal injection drug today that has never been used before in executions, raising ethical concerns by legal experts throughout the nation.

The drug, midazolam hydrochloride, which is commercially known as Versed, would be used for the first time in the scheduled execution of William Happ, 50, who has been on death row for 27 years for killing and raping 21-year-old Angie Crowley in Crystal River in 1986.

A spokeswoman from the Department of Corrections said it has limited supplies of the drug it had been using — pentobarbital sodium — so it switched to Versed.

The nation has seen a shortage of the drug since its maker, Danish company Lundbeck, stopped shipping the drug to prisons where executions take place.

And:

Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York who has studied lethal injection procedures in the U.S., said that the drug companies have more to gain than lose by discontinuing sales to prisons.

“These drugs are not money-makers for companies, so I think it’s not worth it to a manufacturer to get embroiled in a process that could have a negative impact on other drug sales,” Denno said.

She added that it’s possible — and there’s even been some indication — that the drugs could be acquired by prison hospitals for surgeries and then used for executions.

Some states, such as Texas, are getting pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies. But no states apart from Florida have switched to Versed, which is normally used as a sedative before surgery and has never been used in an execution.

“These drugs weren’t made to kill people … they were made with another purpose in mind. It’s unknown how they’re going to work,” Denno said.

"Execution with new drug set for Tuesday," by Bill Cotterell at the Florida Current.

His scheduled lethal injection marks Florida's 80th execution since capital punishment was resumed in 1977. It's the first, however, involving midazolam hydrochloride, an anesthetic that replaces pentobarbital as the first of three drugs administered in an execution.

Capital punishment opponents contend that the new drug might not completely knock out the condemned man, permitting him to suffer silently as the next two drugs -- the paralytic vecuronium bromide and heart-stopping potassium chloride -- are administered.

"This is somewhat of an experiment on a living human being," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said Monday. "The three-drug process depends on the first drug rendering the inmate unconscious and, if he is only partially unconscious, the inmate could be experiencing extreme pain.

"But because the second drug paralyzes him, he would be unable to cry out or show that he's in pain."

Miami New Times posts, "Florida's New Execution Procedure Considered Too "Cruel" For Use on Animals," by Terrence McCoy.

William Happ, who's spent the last 27 years on death row for raping and killing a 21-year-old in 1986, will be the first person today to experience a new execution serum that, across the nation, only Florida has been willing to use.

The drug, called midazolam hydrochloride, will be the first of a triumvirate of serums pumped into Happ, who has abandoned all of his appeals and said he's willing to die. The Florida Department of Corrections has changed serums in light of a nationwide shortage of the traditional pentobarbital sodium. Its manufacturer, a Danish company called Lundbeck, has stopped sending the drug to prisons where executions occur.

No one's quite sure if the new drug, which should put Happ under, will work as promised. And therein lies the rub, because if the drug doesn't work, the second serum dumped into him -- to induce paralysis -- will make it impossible for him to express discomfort or pain.

But Florida Department of Corrections Spokeswoman Misty Cash expressed little concern. "We believe this protocol is the most humane and dignified way of carrying out the rule of the state," she told Riptide. "We only have a limited supplies of the old drug and they'll expire in November, so we had to come up with a new protocol."

She declined to elaborate on how that decision was made. "We're not going to get into a discussion of how or why it was chosen," Cash said.

Earlier coverage from Florida begins at the link.  Related posts are in the international and lethal injection indexes.

To date there have been 30 executions in American death penalty states this year; a total of 1,350 post-Furman executions since 1977.  An inmate who waives his or her appeals in referred to as a volunteer.

More Lethal Injection News From Missouri

Reuters posts, "German firm blocked shipments to U.S. distributor after drug sent for executions," by Kevin Murphy.

A German manufacturer confirmed on Thursday that it took the extraordinary step of suspending shipments of a widely used drug to a U.S. distributor this year after 20 vials were mistakenly sent to the state of Missouri to be used in executions.

Drugmaker Fresenius Kabi said shipments of the anesthetic propofol were halted to a Louisiana distributor for 4 1/2 months through mid-March because the company feared the European Union would ban export of the drug altogether if it was used in executions.

"We felt it was important to make sure it was restricted to the healthcare professionals," said Geoffrey Fenton, a U.S. spokesman for the firm.

Propofol, which is mostly made in Europe, is administered about 50 million times a year in the United States during various surgical procedures, according to the manufacturer.

And:

Fresenius Kabi said it had stopped shipments to Louisiana distributor Morris & Dickson LLC from November 1, 2012 to mid-March, 2013 after the U.S. firm inadvertently sent a carton containing 20 vials to Missouri's department of corrections.

The German company confirmed it had suspended the shipments a day after Missouri announced that it would return the drugs to the distributor. Missouri is taking the unusual step some 11 months after the distributor frantically pleaded for the return of the vials, according to emails recently made public.

A leading death penalty expert, Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said he had never heard of a drug firm suspending shipments to a distributor over their possible use in U.S. executions.

The move shows how U.S. states and suppliers of drugs are coming under strong pressure from big pharmaceutical companies, especially in Europe, not to use supplies in executions.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has updated its report, "Nixon postpones execution over questions about lethal injection drug," by Jeremy Kohler.

The European Union, which is against the death penalty, had threatened to cut off supplies of the drug to the U.S. if the execution went forward, which could have had a widespread impact on hospitals. That seemed to weigh on Nixon, who said his job was “making sure justice is served and public health is protected.” Earlier this week, the governor had said that Europe would not block the executions.

Nixon said he had directed the department to change the execution protocol to use a different form of lethal drug, and said Attorney General Chris Koster would request a new execution date for Nicklasson.

The governor’s announcement comes two days after the Department of Corrections said it would return to a supplier some of the propofol it had planned to use for executions. The supplier of the drug, Morris & Dickson, of Shreveport, La., had pleaded with the state nearly a year ago to return 20 vials it had shipped to Missouri in violation of its agreement with the manufacturer, Fresenius Kabi, of Germany, not to provide the drug for capital punishment.

The department had said it still had some propofol in stock from another supplier. But that manufacturer, Hospira, said it, too, wanted the propofol back because it had not authorized the sale to the distributor, Mercer Medical of suburban Seattle.

“We have written the Missouri Department of Corrections and are notifying the governor’s office requesting that the state not use this product for lethal injection and return it to us,” Hospira spokesman Dan Rosenberg wrote in a statement. Mercer Medical did not return a call seeking comment.

A Fresenius Kabi executive cheered Nixon’s decision.

“This is a decision that will be welcomed by the medical community and patients nationwide who were deeply concerned about the potential of a drug shortage,” John Ducker, chief executive officer of Fresenius Kabi USA, wrote in a statement.

Post Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan writes, "Another thought on capital punishment," for today's paper.

So the state is casting about for yet another alternative. Attorney General Chris Koster has previously suggested a return to the gas chamber. That seems unlikely.

With the death penalty in the news lately, I have been getting a lot of notes from readers. Some of them are serious, some facetious. Among the latter was a proposal to return to Roman-era gladiator days. Sell tickets, promote gambling on outcomes, create a reality show, do whatever necessary to raise money.

That seems unlikely, too, but given the nature of the Missouri Legislature, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.

But it did make me wonder a little about public executions. After all, for most of the long history of capital punishment, executions were public. Maybe they were more of a deterrent that way.

Also, if we are going to execute people, maybe we should do it publicly. If the state is going to take a life, why do it behind closed doors? If it is state-sanctioned, don’t act like it’s something to be ashamed of. That’s another thought.

Most historians give Missouri credit — or blame — for the last public execution in this country. In May 1937, Roscoe “Red” Jackson was hung in Galena, Mo. The sheriff handed out 400 tickets to the hanging, which was conducted inside a stockade. If that’s not quite public, the honor goes to Kentucky, which hung a man a year earlier. No tickets were necessary.

"5 things about drug at issue in Mo. executions," is from the Associated Press, via the Kansas City Star.

EUROPE'S WORRY

Roughly 90 percent of the U.S. supply of propofol comes from a single source: Germany-based Fresenius Kabi. But the anti-death penalty European Union recently threatened to add the drug to its export control list, which would jeopardize U.S. supply. The threat prompted the drug maker to implore Missouri to move away from propofol. But until Friday, Missouri's governor seemed to be holding fast, saying earlier this week that courts generally had long upheld capital punishment and suggested this wasn't the first time foreign countries had objected to products made, or actions taken, in his home state.

And:

WHAT'S NEXT:

While the state explores the options, the planned Oct. 23 execution of Alan Nicklasson is off and Nixon said the state would "immediately request" a new execution date. It's unclear what that means for the planned Nov. 20 execution for another convicted killer, Joseph Franklin.

Earlier coverage of Missouri lethal injection issues begins at the link.