Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 26, 2006 16:13:50 GMT -5
U.S. Judge to Open Rigorous Review of Lethal Injection----Federal judge
will open four days of hearings focusing on a killer's claim that lethal
injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
California's execution of condemned inmates by lethal injection will be
put to its most stringent test ever at a hearing scheduled to start today
in San Jose federal court.
Attorneys for Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981
murder of Terri Lynn Winchell in Lodi, will try to show that California's
procedures violate the 8th Amendment to the Constitution because they may
inflict unreasonable pain upon inmates.
The case has ramifications not only for the 638 individuals scheduled to
die in California but for inmates in other states, including Maryland and
Missouri, where court challenges to lethal injection are also pending.
Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, an expert on methods of
punishment, said the California case is pivotal because U.S. District
Judge Jeremy Fogel has gone beyond judicial efforts in other states to
delve into how lethal injection works, including the unusual step of
visiting the execution chamber at San Quentin earlier this year. The issue
may wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fogel has scheduled four days of hearings, allotting himself six hours to
pose questions to members of the execution team at San Quentin and to
medical experts. The lawyers will also question witnesses.
"What's at stake in this hearing is whether or not a judicial officer is
willing to take a very sober, extremely hard constitutional line on the
administration of lethal injection in California," said Elisabeth Semel,
who runs the death penalty clinic at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of
Law.
"One thing that sometimes get lost, or confused, is if the state wants to
continue to execute people, it is the responsibility of the state to
institute a procedure that meets the requirements of the 8th Amendment,"
which bars cruel and unusual punishment, Semel said.
Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, whose lawyers
are defending the California procedure, offered a contrary view.
"This is a very straightforward case whether California's existing lethal
injection protocol puts Morales at risk of suffering cruel and unusual
punishment," Barankin said. "It is his burden to prove that to the court,
and we are confident that the state's protocol is the most humane method
of carrying out this criminal sentence."
Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general, who heads
the office's death penalty unit, added: "We believe that California's
current lethal injection protocol is constitutional, as was the old one,
and that the hearing will establish that fact."
But Morales' legal team believes "that we will establish that California's
execution protocol is so poorly designed, managed and staffed that the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is institutionally
unable to ensure that executions are performed humanely," said Washington,
D.C., attorney Ginger Anders.
Barbara Christian, mother of the slain teenager, stressed Monday that she
is not concerned with whether Morales suffers.
"As a mother, I don't care what kind of pain Morales feels because of what
he did to my daughter," Christian said in a formal statement released by
her attorney, Gloria Allred. "He showed no mercy when she cried out for
it. He deserves no mercy." According to testimony introduced at trial,
Morales killed Winchell, then a high school student, by beating her head
in with a claw hammer.
Morales' lawyers are expected to probe everything about the state's lethal
injection procedures the nature and amounts of the drugs used, the
lighting in the room where people monitor the inmate's death and the
background of the people on the execution team.
The state has had a de facto moratorium on executions since February, when
officials postponed Morales' execution after they were unable to meet
Fogel's conditions, imposed to ensure that the execution would withstand
constitutional scrutiny.
Since then, California officials have made some changes in the three-drug
thingytail in use at San Quentin and across the country. The first drug,
sodium thiopental, is an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate that is supposed to
make the condemned inmate lose consciousness. The second drug pancuronium
bromide is a paralytic agent to prevent the inmate from moving or
speaking. The third, potassium chloride, causes cardiac arrest.
A key contention in Morales' lawsuit and lethal injection challenges in
several other states is that condemned inmates have been insufficiently
sedated by the 1st drug and therefore experience intense pain but are
unable to express it because they are paralyzed.
Fogel, in prior rulings in the case, said state records suggest that
sodium thiopental may have not worked properly in as many as six of the 11
lethal injection executions conducted in the state, starting with that of
William Bonin, the so-called Freeway Killer, in 1996.
A federal judge in Missouri has halted all executions in that state after
finding flaws in its lethal injection procedure. An execution has been
blocked in South Dakota while a federal judge reviews challenges. Yet
another federal judge, in Baltimore, held an extensive hearing on the
issue last week.
On the other hand, federal judges in Florida, Oklahoma and Texas have
recently rejected challenges to lethal injection, though none of them held
hearings as in-depth as the four-day proceeding Fogel has scheduled.
In response to Fogel's concerns, California officials have made some
changes in procedure. They have lowered the initial sedative dosage from 5
grams to 1.5 grams, but the state protocol now also calls for the
barbiturate to be administered in a constant flow through an intravenous
line in one of the condemned person's arms. The remaining 2 chemicals are
to be injected sequentially in the other arm after the initial sedative
dose.
State officials believe these changes will ensure that the inmate remains
unconscious during the entire execution. But Morales' attorneys who also
include John Grele of San Francisco, David Senior of Los Angeles and
Richard Steinken of Chicago are skeptical. They note that such a
procedure has not been tried in California or elsewhere and consequently
would need to be closely monitored by medical professionals.
But the state's protocol does not call for a doctor on its 14-member
execution team, and medical oaths "first, do no harm" bar doctors from
participating in executions. Organizations for registered nurses also urge
members not to participate. The only role a doctor has had in the modern
era of capital punishment in California is in pronouncing the inmate dead.
In February, Fogel told the state it either had to have an
anesthesiologist on hand or execute the inmate with an overdose of the
sedative.
The state chose the 1st option, but the 2 doctors appointed to do the job
backed out shortly before the execution was scheduled to occur.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
will open four days of hearings focusing on a killer's claim that lethal
injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
California's execution of condemned inmates by lethal injection will be
put to its most stringent test ever at a hearing scheduled to start today
in San Jose federal court.
Attorneys for Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981
murder of Terri Lynn Winchell in Lodi, will try to show that California's
procedures violate the 8th Amendment to the Constitution because they may
inflict unreasonable pain upon inmates.
The case has ramifications not only for the 638 individuals scheduled to
die in California but for inmates in other states, including Maryland and
Missouri, where court challenges to lethal injection are also pending.
Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, an expert on methods of
punishment, said the California case is pivotal because U.S. District
Judge Jeremy Fogel has gone beyond judicial efforts in other states to
delve into how lethal injection works, including the unusual step of
visiting the execution chamber at San Quentin earlier this year. The issue
may wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fogel has scheduled four days of hearings, allotting himself six hours to
pose questions to members of the execution team at San Quentin and to
medical experts. The lawyers will also question witnesses.
"What's at stake in this hearing is whether or not a judicial officer is
willing to take a very sober, extremely hard constitutional line on the
administration of lethal injection in California," said Elisabeth Semel,
who runs the death penalty clinic at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of
Law.
"One thing that sometimes get lost, or confused, is if the state wants to
continue to execute people, it is the responsibility of the state to
institute a procedure that meets the requirements of the 8th Amendment,"
which bars cruel and unusual punishment, Semel said.
Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, whose lawyers
are defending the California procedure, offered a contrary view.
"This is a very straightforward case whether California's existing lethal
injection protocol puts Morales at risk of suffering cruel and unusual
punishment," Barankin said. "It is his burden to prove that to the court,
and we are confident that the state's protocol is the most humane method
of carrying out this criminal sentence."
Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general, who heads
the office's death penalty unit, added: "We believe that California's
current lethal injection protocol is constitutional, as was the old one,
and that the hearing will establish that fact."
But Morales' legal team believes "that we will establish that California's
execution protocol is so poorly designed, managed and staffed that the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is institutionally
unable to ensure that executions are performed humanely," said Washington,
D.C., attorney Ginger Anders.
Barbara Christian, mother of the slain teenager, stressed Monday that she
is not concerned with whether Morales suffers.
"As a mother, I don't care what kind of pain Morales feels because of what
he did to my daughter," Christian said in a formal statement released by
her attorney, Gloria Allred. "He showed no mercy when she cried out for
it. He deserves no mercy." According to testimony introduced at trial,
Morales killed Winchell, then a high school student, by beating her head
in with a claw hammer.
Morales' lawyers are expected to probe everything about the state's lethal
injection procedures the nature and amounts of the drugs used, the
lighting in the room where people monitor the inmate's death and the
background of the people on the execution team.
The state has had a de facto moratorium on executions since February, when
officials postponed Morales' execution after they were unable to meet
Fogel's conditions, imposed to ensure that the execution would withstand
constitutional scrutiny.
Since then, California officials have made some changes in the three-drug
thingytail in use at San Quentin and across the country. The first drug,
sodium thiopental, is an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate that is supposed to
make the condemned inmate lose consciousness. The second drug pancuronium
bromide is a paralytic agent to prevent the inmate from moving or
speaking. The third, potassium chloride, causes cardiac arrest.
A key contention in Morales' lawsuit and lethal injection challenges in
several other states is that condemned inmates have been insufficiently
sedated by the 1st drug and therefore experience intense pain but are
unable to express it because they are paralyzed.
Fogel, in prior rulings in the case, said state records suggest that
sodium thiopental may have not worked properly in as many as six of the 11
lethal injection executions conducted in the state, starting with that of
William Bonin, the so-called Freeway Killer, in 1996.
A federal judge in Missouri has halted all executions in that state after
finding flaws in its lethal injection procedure. An execution has been
blocked in South Dakota while a federal judge reviews challenges. Yet
another federal judge, in Baltimore, held an extensive hearing on the
issue last week.
On the other hand, federal judges in Florida, Oklahoma and Texas have
recently rejected challenges to lethal injection, though none of them held
hearings as in-depth as the four-day proceeding Fogel has scheduled.
In response to Fogel's concerns, California officials have made some
changes in procedure. They have lowered the initial sedative dosage from 5
grams to 1.5 grams, but the state protocol now also calls for the
barbiturate to be administered in a constant flow through an intravenous
line in one of the condemned person's arms. The remaining 2 chemicals are
to be injected sequentially in the other arm after the initial sedative
dose.
State officials believe these changes will ensure that the inmate remains
unconscious during the entire execution. But Morales' attorneys who also
include John Grele of San Francisco, David Senior of Los Angeles and
Richard Steinken of Chicago are skeptical. They note that such a
procedure has not been tried in California or elsewhere and consequently
would need to be closely monitored by medical professionals.
But the state's protocol does not call for a doctor on its 14-member
execution team, and medical oaths "first, do no harm" bar doctors from
participating in executions. Organizations for registered nurses also urge
members not to participate. The only role a doctor has had in the modern
era of capital punishment in California is in pronouncing the inmate dead.
In February, Fogel told the state it either had to have an
anesthesiologist on hand or execute the inmate with an overdose of the
sedative.
The state chose the 1st option, but the 2 doctors appointed to do the job
backed out shortly before the execution was scheduled to occur.
(source: Los Angeles Times)