Oklahoma unveils new death chamber

The condemned will be strapped in tight, while the chemicals are prepared in an adjacent room

The US state of Oklahoma has unveiled its newly remodeled death chamber, where at least three men are scheduled to be executed before year's end. The chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester was renovated at a cost of $71,000. It features more space for the executioners to work, and new audio and video equipment.

It was rebuilt after an April execution went awry when executioners failed to inject the lethal drugs properly. Convicted murderer Clayton Lockett writhed on the gurney for nearly an hour as the execution team struggled to find suitable veins in his arms, legs, neck and feet.
They ultimately attempted to inject the drugs into a vein in his groin but that failed, dispersing the powerful sedative into his tissue rather than directing it into his bloodstream. The execution was halted when the error was discovered. Lockett died shortly after of a heart attack.

 

The actual execution room was slightly shortened to make room for the chemical team in the adjacent room

On Thursday, Oklahoma corrections officials took news media on a tour of the new facility, showing the enlarged "chemical room" where the executions administer the lethal drugs. By expanding the "chemical room", the state reduced the size of the witness chamber and the room in which the condemned is strapped to the gurney. In future, five members of the news media will be allowed to witness executions, down from 12.  The chamber has cameras, video screens and a heartbeat monitor enabling the executioners to track the procedure's progress. An ultrasound machine will enable the team to more easily locate the condemned's veins.
Charles Fredrick Warner, who had initially been scheduled to die just hours after Lockett on April 20th, will be next in the chamber, his execution scheduled for November 13th. Warner was convicted for the 1997 murder and rape of an 11-month-old girl.

 

Hope for reprieve: The execution chamber includes a direct telephone line to the governor's office

Lethal injection: US states secretly resort to untested drugs

 

As many American states have found it harder to source drugs for lethal injections, they stand accused of using improvised and possibly painful methods - and buying drugs furtively from unregulated pharmacies.

Joseph Franklin was sentenced to death for shooting and killing a man outside a synagogue in 1977. He was convicted or blamed for a series of other racially motivated murders, and confessed to being the sniper who shot porn publisher Larry Flynt in 1978, leaving him partially paralyzed. He is due to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri on November 20th, if no last-minute legal appeal is accepted.

The state's authorities had been planning to use propofol, a common anaesthetic that is untested as a lethal injection drug, for the execution of Franklin and a second convicted murderer, Allen Nicklasson.  But Governor Jay Nixon postponed Nicklasson's execution last month after it became apparent that using propofol, some of which was made by a German manufacturer, might put hospital supplies of the drug at risk.  Missouri then announced it would instead use pentobarbital, sourced not from a pharmaceutical company but from a compounding pharmacy - a pharmacy that makes small batches of drugs on demand for specific clients.

Campaigners object to these pharmacies partly because of an incident last year when a compounded drug in Massachusetts was blamed for an outbreak of meningitis that left more than 60 people dead, but also because they are not subject to regulation by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

"They operate in a kind of grey zone," says Brian Stull of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "There is no way to verify that what comes from a compounding pharmacy is what it purports to be, and that it is safe and effective."

Lethal injection is the primary method of execution in all 32 states in which the death penalty is permitted, and for several years they have been struggling to obtain the drugs they need.  All the states employed similar three-drug lethal injection formulas for decades, until the US company that made one key ingredient, sodium thiopental, stopped supplying it. Manufacturers in Europe, where the death penalty is outlawed, have since sought to block the use of their products for executions in the US.

State authorities have reacted in two ways: by using new drugs or combinations of drugs, and occasionally sourcing them from compounding pharmacies. This week alone three executions were scheduled in three states, using three different lethal injection methods.

 

Missouri abandoned plans to use Propofol - a common hospital anaesthetic

Texas used pentobarbital to execute Jamie McCoskey on Tuesday, the same day that Florida used a three-drug combination to execute Darius Kimbrough. Florida's combination included a drug called midazolam, which had never been used for an execution before the state put William Happ to death last month, using the same mixture.

An Associated Press reporter who witnessed Happ's execution said he seemed to remain conscious for longer and move more than people he had seen put to death with different lethal injections.

Ohio was due to use an untested two-drug mixture of midazolam and hydromorphone to execute Ronald Phillips on Thursday, but in an unprecedented step the execution was stayed at the last minute in order to consider a request by Phillips to donate his organs.

Brian Stull says states have been left "scrambling for drugs", and have become increasingly secretive.

"It's become really hard - even for people who follow this issue closely - to know what's going on in each state with each drug because there are so many scenarios proliferating," he says.

Missouri has shielded the compounding pharmacy supplying its pentobarbital from unwelcome publicity by adding it to the execution team - a list of people involved in the execution whose anonymity is protected.

The three-drug method was presented as a more humane replacement for lethal gas and the electric chair. But critics are skeptical. Volumes of research have suggested the death penalty is significantly more expensive to taxpayers than the punishment of life in prison, due largely to the lengthy legal processes involved. California, for instance, has spent about $4bn since 1978 to fund its capital punishment system, but has executed only 13 prisoners.

Earlier this year lawyers in Georgia obtained a stay of execution for Warren Hill - a convicted murderer - after questioning a new law that makes the way lethal injection drugs are obtained a state secret.

Death penalty opponents have long been concerned that lethal injections could cause extreme pain, violating convicts' constitutional protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and they worry that the increasing use of new, untested drugs may heighten that risk. Pharmacies fear negative publicity so much, that the necessary drugs are becoming scarce.

Joseph Franklin is among 23 people on death row in Missouri who have appealed against the plan to execute them using pentobarbital from an undisclosed compounding pharmacy, saying it could cause unnecessary suffering. The Missouri Corrections Department said it could not comment because of the litigation.

In past executions across the US, some convicts have writhed, vomited and made sounds after being injected, and sometimes execution staff have struggled to find a vein. Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School and death penalty expert, says there is evidence that a substantial number of prison volunteers and people with questionable expertise have been used to carry out executions.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, whose state has not carried out an execution since 2005, has described the system in the US as "completely broken".

"Let's say that there was magically a vapour, a mist, a pill, a fatal hypnotic stare. You still have to find American manufacturers who are willing to produce it and courts who are willing to accept it," he recently told the National Journal. "I don't see any of that happening."

Is the motivation for the death penalty justice, or is it vengeance ? And should a government that forbids killing among its citizens be in the business of killing people ?

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Gottcha! But then, this whole subject is so horrifyingly inhumane, it's ridiculous.