Professor questions state account of execution

Citing media reports, the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide said a man previously convicted of drug offenses was hanged in Singapore on April 21.

“It was clear after the convulsions and jerking, whatever, it was clear that he was striving for breath”, Kissel said.

Williams’ attorneys singled out that drug.

Arkansas’ lethal injection protocol won’t be on the agenda when the Legislature convenes this week and it’s unlikely to come up when the governor addresses a joint House and Senate session, but the questions about the execution could hover over the session nonetheless.

Hutchinson said Williams’ execution will be reviewed by the Department of Correction, which is typical any time an inmate is put to death.

Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period before one of its lethal injection drugs expires on Sunday. The state scheduled the execution of Kenneth Williams for Thursday night. But courts issued stays for four of the inmates. The method begins with midazolam.

The execution caps days of legal jostling by Lee’s defense lawyers and attorneys for the state of Arkansas over the state’s right to use a paralytic as part of its lethal injection cocktail.

But manufacturers and European countries started withholding sodium thiopental and pentobarbital, saying they didn’t want them used in executions.

DENNIS McGUIRE: Executed Jan. 16, 2014, in Ohio.

JOSEPH WOOD: Executed on July 23, 2014, in Arizona. Take for example, the case of Clayton Lockett who died after 43 long minutes from the moment he was sedated.

Midazolam is supposed to render an inmate unconscious. Whatever else might be said, they can’t call this a delaying action on behalf of the four dead inmates. “It makes you relax, but it has no pain-blocking qualities”, Dr. David Waisel, an anesthesiologist at Harvard Medical School, told CNN earlier this month.

The lawsuit filed in a US district court in Little Rock said: “If the midazolam fails to keep the prisoner under anesthesia, the prisoner would be awake and aware but unable to move or speak or even open his eyes, so he would then look completely serene despite being in agony”. The court ruled that the testimony was not a mitigating factor and denied the requested funding.

Arkansas officials pushed back against notions that Williams showed awareness of pain.

A spokesman for the Arkansas governor called the movements seen in Thursday’s execution “an involuntary muscular reaction” that were common side effects of midazolam.

Hutchinson had put a temporary hold on Williams’ execution Thursday evening to allow the US Supreme Court to consider motions for stays of execution.

“When he found out that we are bringing his daughter and granddaughter to see him, and that my mom and dad bought the tickets, he was crying to the attorney”, Greenwood said. The filing objects to the characterization of executions as botched and contends all movement occurred before the consciousness check and before other drugs were administered following midazolam. Other states used compounding pharmacies – which aren’t federally regulated – to manufacture pentobarbital.

But in Arkansas there’s only one other option.

“Within three minutes into the execution, our client began coughing, convulsing, jerking and lurching”, he said. The next year, Utah successfully passed legislation to reintroduce firing squads.

Before last night’s lethal injection, three men had already met their deaths.

The latest unorthodox execution involving a disputed sedative likely will influence arguments in a rare hearing later this year by a federal appeals court.

An investigation later revealed that a single intravenous line in Lockett’s groin was improperly set and covered with a sheet, resulting in some of the lethal drugs leaking onto the floor and being injected into Lockett’s tissue instead of directly into his bloodstream.

Kelly Kissel, another media witness who has seen ten executions, including two that have involved the controversial drug Midazolam, says he’s never witnessed anything like that.