[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MASS., ALA., MO., OKLA.

[Rick Halperin]

April 9



TEXAS----execution

Texas executes man convicted of killing a Dallas-area police officer in 2002 
shootout



Texas prison officials on Thursday executed a man convicted in the slaying of a 
Dallas-area police officer during a 2002 shootout that followed the killing of 
a customer outside a convenience store.

Kent Sprouse, 42, became the 5th convicted killer put to death this year in 
Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state.

Before his execution, Sprouse apologized to the families of his victims and his 
own family "for all the trouble I've caused everyone." Then he thanked his 
family members for their support.

"I guess that's it," he said.

He took several deep breaths after the execution drug pentobarbital began 
taking effect, then began snoring. Within a minute, all movement stopped. He 
was pronounced dead 22 minutes later at 6:33 p.m. CDT.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Sprouse's case in November, and no 
last-day appeals were filed for him in the courts.

Sprouse was sentenced to death for the October 2002 killing of 28-year-old 
Harry Marvin "Marty" Steinfeldt III, a police officer in Ferris, about 20 miles 
south of Dallas.

Witnesses said Sprouse carried a shotgun into the Ferris Food Mart store while 
he made a purchase and then walked outside and fired toward 2 men at a pay 
phone. He went to his car and appeared to have some trouble with it, then shot 
and killed 38-year-old Pedro Moreno, a customer who was pumping gas near him.

Steinfeldt responded to a 911 call about a customer shot at the store and came 
under gunfire. He was struck twice under the arm where his protective vest did 
not cover him. He managed to fire 17 shots, reloading his gun once, and wounded 
Sprouse in the chest, leg and hand.

Court records indicate Sprouse told an officer who accompanied him in an 
ambulance to a hospital that he believed Moreno was an undercover officer, so 
he shot him.

"And I shot the other officer that was in uniform," Sprouse said, according to 
the records.

Sprouse was charged in Moreno's killing, but wasn't tried for it.

Relatives of both Steinfeldt and Moreno declined to speak with reporters after 
Sprouse's execution. Michelle Steinfeldt, the officer's widow, released a 
statement saying the execution was "the emotional end of a long, excruciating 
journey."

Heath Crossland, who worked with Steinfeldt at the Ennis Police Department and 
was among a few dozen officers who stood outside the prison during the 
execution, described his slain friend as "a teddy bear" and was thinking of the 
officer's daughter, who was born after he was killed.

"To think this little girl didn't get the opportunity to know the teddy bear 
kind of guy we knew, that's such a loss," Crossland said.

Tests showed that Sprouse, a Boone County, Missouri, native, had taken 
methamphetamine and other illegal drugs within 48 hours of the killings.

Jim Jenkins, who was Sprouse's lead lawyer at his trial in Steinfeldt's death, 
said Sprouse suffered from the effects of methamphetamine addiction.

"He just didn't know what he was doing, but the jury has to buy that," Jenkins 
said. "It's sort of like being drunk and killing somebody. That's really not a 
defense, not a legal defense. ... The whole thing is extremely sad."

Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials said a recent purchase of 
pentobarbital means they have enough of the sedative to carry out 3 other 
executions set for this month, including 1 next week. But at least 3 more are 
set for May and June, meaning they would have to find a new supply or switch to 
a different drug to carry out those executions on schedule.

Death penalty states have found it increasingly difficult to acquire execution 
drugs because traditional manufacturers now refuse to sell their drugs for use 
in executions. States now rely on compounding pharmacies for their 
made-to-order execution drugs.

Sprouse becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas 
and the 523rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 
1982. Sprouse becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas 
since Greg Abbott became governor earlier this year.

Sprouse becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the 
USA and the 1405 overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 
1977.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)

**************************

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----5

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----523

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

6------------Apr. 15-------------------Manual Garza---------524

7-----------Apr. 23-------------------Richard Vasquez------525

8-----------Apr. 28-------------------Robert Pruett--------526

9-----------May 12--------------------Derrick Charles------527

10----------June 3--------------------Les Bower------------528

11-----------June 18-------------------Gregory Russeau------529

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)






********************************************impending execution

Death Watch----Just because you have a right to a lawyer, doesn't mean that 
they have to be any good



On Feb. 2, 2001, moments after being confronted by the San Antonio policeman 
who would soon learn of his warrants, 22-year-old Manuel Fernando Garza escaped 
Officer John Riojas' grip and sprinted down the street. Riojas gave chase and 
eventually caught up with Garza, who continued to resist arrest. Riojas pulled 
his gun out, and Garza took it from him. Garza fired 1 shot that ended up 
killing Riojas on the spot.

Garza was arrested Feb. 4 and appointed an attorney on Feb. 14. He hardly stood 
a chance at escaping the death penalty from that moment on.

On Feb. 21, one week after being appointed by the court to Garza's case, his 
attorney withdrew on account of being unqualified to argue capital cases. 2 new 
attorneys were placed on Garza's case that day, but 17 months later, when the 
first chair withdrew so that he could go on his vacation, neither had put any 
investigative work in. Same goes for the investigator appointed to Garza's case 
May 8, 2001: He ultimately left the case after losing his license; he had not 
made any requests for discovery.

Vincent Callahan was then appointed as Garza's 1st-chair counsel on July 19, 
2002. He was friends with Edward Camara, Garza's 2nd chair, and, according to 
Camara, "pretty well not very reliable as far as putting necessary work on a 
case." The 2 devised a plan: Camara would handle the jury selection, and 
Callahan would work on Garza's punishment. Both decided to dedicate no 
resources to mitigation, aside from a mitigation specialist who billed Garza's 
camp for 12.75 hours. A psychologist also met with Garza for 2 hours before 
being told (by Callahan and Camara) to cut his efforts short.

Jury selection began Aug. 30 and lasted over a month. The trial, held in 
October, took less than 1/3 of that time. Garza was convicted of capital murder 
on Oct. 24; he received his death sentence 5 days later.

San Antonio attorney Michael Gross attempted to argue ineffective assistance of 
counsel in a 2004 application to the state for a writ of habeas corpus. The 
162-page writ laid out 9 claims, but it was denied in 2008. A federal habeas 
petition was stayed the following year while Garza exhausted his remedies at 
the state level, and an amended version was filed and then denied by the 
federal court in 2012. In 2013, an appeal to the Fifth Circuit was also denied, 
as was a subsequent appeal for a certificate of appealability. A 2014 writ of 
certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied in June.

Now 35, Garza is set for execution next Wednesday, April 15. He'll be the 6th 
Texan executed this year and 524th since the state's reinstatement of the death 
penalty in 1976.

(source: Austin Chronicle)








MASSACHUSETTS:

The Last Massachusetts Execution, Of Phillip Bellino & Edward Gertson, Took 
Place Nearly 70 Years Ago



Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has officially been found guilty of 
all 30 counts against him. 17 of those counts carry a possible death penalty 
sentence. Though the state of Massachusetts abolished capital punishment in 
1984, Tsarnaev's case is federal, meaning he is still eligible for death row. 
Massachusetts has a complicated history with execution, and it's a lengthy one. 
It was the 1st state to allow capital punishment throughout the original 
colonies and, oddly, has executed over 2 dozen witches. The 1st execution ever 
in the state, a hanging, occurred all the way back in 1630. The most recent 
death penalty executions in Massachusetts, however, occurred long after that.

Flash forward some 317 years and 343 executions later and you have the last 
case of capital punishment being used in Massachusetts. Phillip Bellino and 
Edward Gertson were electrocuted in 1947 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Bellino 
and Gertson had been convicted of killing Tex Williams after a joint effort to 
rob a dice game yielded well under the expected amount of profit. Fearing he'd 
snitch, Bellino and Gertson murdered Williams. Though Bellino and Gertson were 
eventually found guilty of 1st-degree murder, the men appealed their death 
sentence due to the fact that 14 jurors instead of 12 had overseen their case. 
The appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court failed, as did their appeal to the 
Supreme Court. Bellino and Gertson were executed just 2 years after committing 
their crime, a relatively short time compared to today's average wait of over 
16 years.

Bellino and Gertson weren't the last inmates to face execution in the state but 
stand as the last to be successfully executed. After the duo's electrocutions, 
subsequent politicians like Governor Paul Dever and Governor Joseph Ely 
advocated heavily for abolishing the death penalty altogether, which the state 
eventually did following the landmark case Furman vs. Georgia, which put a 
4-year ban on capital punishment across the country in 1972. It was a 
voter-enacted constitutional amendment banning the death penalty in 
Massachusetts in 1982 that sealed the deal.

Regarding the last federal prisoner to be executed, it was Louis Jones Jr., who 
was executed by lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2003. Jones had 
been convicted of kidnapping, raping, and murdering former Army Private Tracie 
Joy McBride in Texas in 1995. Although his lawyer had pointed to brain damage 
caused by a government-acknowledged exposure to dangerous chemicals while Jones 
served during the Gulf War, the argument that Jones was impaired was not enough 
to prevent his execution nor apparently was it compelling enough of a reason to 
commute his sentence to simply life in prison.

(source: bustle.com)








ALABAMA:

30 Years on Death Row: A Conversation with Anthony Ray Hinton ---- 'They tell 
you justice is blind. I am telling you that justice can see.'



Anthony Ray Hinton was convicted of murdering 2 fast food restaurant managers 
in separate robberies in the Birmingham, Ala. area in 1985. The only evidence 
linking Hinton to the crime were bullets the state's experts claimed matched a 
.38 revolver recovered from Hinton's home. Time cards and other evidence 
suggested Hinton was working at his warehouse job at the time of the killings. 
There were no fingerprints. No eyewitness testimony linked Hinton to the 
killings.

Nevertheless, Hinton, then 29, was sent to death row.

Last year, after years of appeals by Hinton and his attorney, Bryan Stevenson 
of the Equal Justice Initiative, the United States Supreme Court overturned 
Hinton's conviction and ordered a new trial. (Stevenson is on The Marshall 
Project's advisory board.)

Last month, 3 experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences 
concluded the bullets from the 3 robberies didn't match each other and could 
not be linked to the supposed murder weapon.

Last Friday, Hinton emerged from his Jefferson County cell, 2 months shy of his 
59th birthday, a free man. In doing so, he became the 152nd person to be 
exonerated from death row in the United States, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

This week, Hinton talked to Corey G. Johnson of The Marshall Project about his 
30-year quest for justice, how he kept his sanity during decades of solitary 
confinement, and his return to an unfamiliar world. The interview has been 
edited for length and clarity.

What's it like to be free, Ray?

I went for a walk this morning for the first time. I went where my mom used to 
live and walked around the yard and come back. It's hard to believe that I can 
go wherever I want to go without somebody talking about, 'Well, you can't go 
beyond that' It's kind of mind-boggling, to tell you the truth. I really 
haven't gotten quite used to it. I think I'm getting there, but I still have a 
ways to go.

What's boggling your mind?

I haven't seen the razor wire fence and the guards in the guard towers. Or the 
police riding around every so many seconds or just patrolling the prison. And 
[on death row] you're boxed in this like, playground, for normally an hour a 
day, and that???s depending on the weather, if there's enough staff. We don't 
walk everyday. Sometimes we didn't walk for a week, 2 weeks because they don't 
have the staff to keep you outside in order for you to get some exercise. So 
now I'm able to just walk out without anybody saying, 'Hey, it's time to go 
in.'

I've been to the mall and I'm just getting comfortable with people just 
walking, so many people behind me and in front of me, because you don't have 
that in there. I don't know who's walking behind me, who's that in front of me 
or who's beside me. It makes me a little nervous.

And that nervousness is coming from the fear that somebody can harm you?

Yes, yes, yes.

On death row, we had our separate exercise yard. On death row, you walk with a 
certain amount of groups. For instance, the tier that I was on, you have a 
total of 28 inmates, and all of us know one another, so you've got some playing 
basketball, some playing volleyball, some walking around the yard. So you're 
not constantly where a whole lot of people are around you at one time, as 
opposed to when I went to the mall last Saturday. They were coming and going 
from every direction.

You've got to realize something, I stayed in a 5' x 7' for 30 years, just 
about. I was in that cell by myself, no one else but me. I've got to get used 
to noise and the sounds of everything because it's fairly quiet on death row. 
Every man is in his own world. You've got some reading books, some drawing, 
some watching TV, some up under their headphones. We all did our time 
differently.

So, you get out here and there's people all over the place, making all kinds of 
noise, all up in your personal space.

Absolutely. I felt out of place, I was wondering who was really watching me. 
That first Friday, people were recognizing me and pointing at me, and in one 
way I was like okay, they've seen me on the news, and I'm thinking, What are 
they thinking? Do they think: There's that man that got away with it, or, 
There's that man that was innocent? So I'm trying to eat, and every now and 
then, I would look up and see people just pointing at me and looking at me, and 
I want to say, I'm a human being, yeah you've seen me on TV, I'm trying to 
adjust.

It took me a little while to remember how to use a fork. You know we don't use 
forks in the penitentiary. You get a spoon. And the spoon is plastic, so I 
haven't used a fork in 30 years. I just really tried to order something that 
didn't make me look like I didn't have any home training. It's like learning 
everything over again.

What did you order?

I got me some baked beans. We had baked beans down there, believe it or not. I 
got some fried chicken. I wanted some fish and hush puppies, and I really 
wanted a salad. I looked at the salad, and I couldn't never just like adjust to 
sticking the fork down, so I kinda put that back to the side. I just stayed 
with something that was natural to me - a piece of chicken. I picked it up with 
my hands and then bit it off. Pretty much what we would have in the 
penitentiary. We do have fried chicken occasionally. And like, say, every 
fourth of July, we'd have baked beans. I stayed with food I could get on death 
row.

Now that you're a free man, what do you want to do?

I would love to be able to be a motivational speaker for young black kids. If I 
could, I'd go to high schools throughout the state, or churches. I think that 
somebody that has been through what I've been through can look kids in the eye 
and tell them: "Even if you're obeying the law, you stand a greater chance of 
going to prison. I wasn't breaking the law, and I went to prison - not just to 
prison, I went to death row - for 30 years. And I'm here to ask y'all to go to 
school and get good grades, go to college and don't end up where I ended up. 
Once you get in there, you can't have mama, you can't call for your brother."

I want to talk to these young people in a language that they can understand, 
and I want to save as many as I can. I know I wouldn't be able to save 
everybody, but the person that goes to prison, if he ever heard me talk and he 
went to prison, he'll at least say, "A guy tried to tell me about prison." 
Nobody told me about places like that, and I feel like even on some Sunday, I 
want to be able to get in my car - once I get one if I ever get one - and just 
go out try to be an inspiration to the young blacks, because I think they need 
it more than any other race, just living in Alabama.

In solitary confinement, a lot of people break up. They lose their mind, they 
give up, they commit suicide. Tell me about your experience. How you were able 
to hold onto yourself?

I come from a Christian background. My mom was strict. She always would instill 
in us that we don't need anybody to actually play with. Get outside and play by 
yourself. She taught me to lean on Jesus and no one else. And when I got to 
death row, believe it or not, I witnessed people hanging. I seen people cut 
their wrist. I seen blood leaking from under the cell. I seen men who hung 
themselves. And so I became a person that got wrapped up in my sense of humor, 
and I tried to make everybody that I came in contact with - from prison guard 
to the wardens to the inmates - I tried to make everybody laugh. I would see a 
guard come by and I would say, "Hey officer." He'd say, "Yeah Anthony, what can 
I do for you?" I'd say, "I need to run to the house for about an hour, and 
I???m gonna need to use your car. I'll bring it right back, but I need to go." 
And they would laugh.

You have to understand something: These crooked D.A.s and police officers and 
racist people had lied on me and convicted me of a horrible crime for something 
I didn't do. They stole my 30s, they stole my 40s, they stole my 50s. I could 
not afford to give them my soul. I couldn't give them me. I had to hold onto 
that, and the only thing that kept me from losing my mind was my sense of 
humor.

There's no man who's able to go in a cell by yourself, and you're there for 23, 
sometimes 24 hours a day, and you don't come out. There's not a human being 
that can withstand that pressure unless there's something greater inside of 
him. And the spirit was in me where I didn't have to worry about killing 
myself.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that Satan didn't come up on me and tell me, Well 
you ain't never gonna get out of here. When I saw people going to be executed, 
every man in there would tell you he questions himself - is that ever going to 
happen to me? And when that little voice comes and says, Well they're going to 
get you the next time, I would immediately tell him to get thee behind me, and 
I would turn on that switch of laughter. And I didn't ever turn it off. To this 
day, even though I'm free, I still haven't turned that sense of humor off.

If you could have seen me in those 30 years, you would have said this guy can't 
be human. This guy is crazy. This guy laughs and plays like he ain't on death 
row. I didn't accept the death penalty. You can't make me take the death 
penalty. You can give it to me, but you can't make me take it in my heart.

And you never did take it in your heart because you knew you were innocent?

I knew I was innocent. And I believed that the God that I served would not let 
me die for something that I didn't do. I live by one particular Bible verse: 
The book of Mark, chapter 11, verse 24: "What things you ever so desire, when 
you pray, believe in them, and you shall have them." And my prayer was: Lord, 
deliver me from this place.

And how often did you pray that prayer?

Every night. I woke up on it. I went to sleep with it on my mind. Every night. 
That's why I can tell you that I know it was the grace of God, and I know he 
heard my prayer.

Your case and what happened to you is one of the worst examples of injustice 
that I've ever seen.

One of the white men that came to carry me to jail said, "Oh I don't care if 
you did it or didn't do it, you're gonna pay the price for it." I said, "How is 
that, when I haven't done nothing?" And he said, "Well let me tell you, on 
account of you're black, you're going to have a white lawyer, a white judge, 
more than likely a white jury, and you have a prior conviction for theft of 
property. You know what that spells?" I said "No sir." He said, "It spells 
Conviction. Conviction, Conviction, Conviction, Conviction."

Did you end up with an all white legal situation?

The judge was white. Both of the prosecutors were white. But the jury was 
mixed. I might have had 5 blacks on the jury, but I'm not sure.

"People say she died of a broken heart because she never could get over me. 
That worried me, and I believe it with every fiber of my body that she was 
never the same when I went to prison."

Do you think those prosecutors deserve to lose their license?

Most definitely they deserve to lose their license. And the reason I say that, 
Mr. Stevenson will tell you if you talk to him, the same prosecutor told the 
newspaper that if I ever got out, he would be waiting on me, with a brand new 
.38 pistol, and he would gun me down in the parking lot. It's all in the 
Birmingham News.

Were there any days behind bars where you felt overwhelmed or down?

Yes. When I got the word sent to me that my mother had passed in 2002. That was 
the saddest day of my life. Here's a woman that raised you, fed you, clothed 
you, and she passed. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye, I never got a 
chance to hug her. I didn't know where they were burying her, all of these 
things were on my mind, and that was the saddest thing. People say she died of 
a broken heart because she never could get over me. That worried me, and I 
believe it with every fiber of my body that she was never the same when I went 
to prison. She didn't understand, she wasn't very educated so she didn't 
understand. She would say, "When are these people going to let you go?" So that 
is a hurting thing. [Crying] They didn't just take me, but they did this to my 
mama.

How did you pull through that?

When they buried her, I had to fight even harder with that sense of humor 
because I knew she wouldn't ever want me to give up. I knew if anybody was 
going to be in God's ear, I knew that from the day my mother arrived in heaven, 
she was going to be on him constantly. And so I pulled myself back together and 
I put this wall around me. I just couldn't feel sad no more. I knew that one 
day God was going to deliver me. And I believed when I had done ten years, I 
believe God called my name and said, Ray come forth. 20 years went and he said, 
Ray come forth. And when that 30 years came, he said, Ray come forth, and then 
I came out the door just like Lazarus did. That's what I believe. So those 
devils, those liars, those racist people, they will get their just reward one 
day. I'm at home.

Tell me about the day you received the news the Supreme Court had ordered a new 
trial.

I can still hear my voice screaming on death row: I got a new trial! I got a 
new trial! I don't do drugs, period. Never have. But it was a high that you 
can't even explain. I felt like I was walking on water, I felt like I could 
walk on air.

Has anyone from the state of Alabama or associated with this case ever 
apologized to you?

No. I haven't even had a black senator or anyone from the legislature 
apologize. Nobody. Nobody who worked with the state has said, I'm sorry for 
what happened to you. Nope. Nobody.

Are you going to sue or seek compensation for what you went through?

I haven't talked about it, and Mr. Stevenson hasn't talked about it. Believe it 
or not, I would feel relieved if they would just come clean and somebody would 
say, "Hey, we're sorry." But you know, this is Alabama. I don't think we should 
have to make them pay me, but if that's what it takes and if that's what Mr. 
Stevenson thinks we should do, then that's what we'll do.

For other people who are on death row, or have been wrongfully convicted, what 
advice would you give them?

I would tell them just hold on, pray, keep the faith, work with their lawyer, 
question their lawyer, go to the law libraries whenever they could. Never give 
up. If you know you're there for something you didn't do, I would give them my 
favorite scripture, Mark 11:24, and I wouldn't want them to just read it. I 
would want them to believe it. And if they believe, I assure them they can walk 
out of there, just like I did. Because what's done in the dark will come to 
light.

How would you improve the criminal justice system given what you've 
experienced?

First of all, there needs to be a overhaul of racial diversity in these 
criminal cases. Second of all, there should be a committee that overlooks every 
case that ended with the death penalty to make sure the person got a fair trial 
and was given adequate funding to have experts. Most people don???t realize, I 
went to trial for 2 capital murders. Now, the state had every available agency 
that it needed at its disposal. My lawyer didn't have anything like that. So 
the playing field isn't fair. Not even halfway level. You've got to make the 
playing field level. I think if the state is going to spend, let's say 500,000 
dollars, then the defense should get 500,000 dollars. Imagine if I had had the 
money that my lawyer knew I needed to have experts. This case would have never 
got off the ground.

But now, here's the thing that most people don't understand. They say "Well, 
you have a right to an attorney." They didn't lie about that. They'll give you 
any attorney. But is he going to work for you? Is he going to do for you what 
you need to do? I don't think so. Number 2 is, they tell you justice is blind. 
I am telling you that justice can see. She sees what race you are, she sees 
where you went to college, she sees economics, she sees everything there is to 
see. And it all depends on what she sees, depends on whether or not you go back 
home or not. And when she saw me, she knew I was going to death row.

But she didn't see the power of God.

No she didn't. And that was her biggest mistake.

(source: The Marshall Project)








MISSOURI----stay of impending execution

Missouri Supreme Court Stops Planned Execution



The Missouri Supreme Court has lifted its execution order for Kimber Edwards, 
who was sentenced to die by lethal injection in May.

Edwards, 50, is a former St. Louis City jailer who in 2000 hired 1 or 2 people 
to kill his ex-wife to whom he owed a year's worth of child support.

The court 2 weeks ago set his execution to happen between 6 p.m. May 12 and 
5:59 May 13 at the prison in Bonne Terre, but on Wednesday issued an order 
lifting that execution warrant. It offered no explanation for the latter 
action.

Missouri is scheduled to next week carry out the execution of 52-year-old Andre 
Cole for the murder of a friend of his ex-wife in a dispute over child support. 
His execution is scheduled to happen within a 24-hour period beginning at 6 
p.m. April 14.

(source: ozarksfirst.com)








OKLAHOMA:

Oklahoma Legislature Approves Bill To Bring Back The Gas Chamber



Oklahoma lawmakers voted Thursday to reinstate the gas chamber as a backup 
execution method to lethal injection.

The Oklahoma Senate voted 41-0 in favor of HB 1879, which legalizes execution 
by nitrogen hypoxia. Said by supporters to be more humane than using gases that 
cause suffocation, nitrogen hypoxia causes death when nitrogen gas pumped into 
the chamber depletes the oxygen supply in the blood.

"It just goes to show you how hell-bent they are on killing people," Richard 
Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate whose lawsuit on lethal injection will be 
heard by the U.S. Supreme Court later this month, told The Huffington Post 
after the vote. "If they can gas them, use lethal injection -- it should really 
scare everyone out there that they're so bent on this."

The bill was approved by the House in March, and now goes to Gov. Mary Fallin 
(R) for signature. Reached by The Huffington Post Thursday, a gubernatorial 
spokesman declined to comment on the legislation until the governor's office 
has reviewed the measure.

Lethal injection is still the primary execution method in Oklahoma and all 31 
other states that have the death penalty. The nitrogen gas chamber would be 
employed as a secondary method should lethal injection drugs become 
unavailable, or in the event the state's protocol is deemed unconstitutional 
when the Supreme Court examines its legality later this month.

Rep. Mike Christian (R-Oklahoma City) who sponsored HB 1879 after reading a 
2014 Slate article, told The Huffington Post in March that the nitrogen hypoxia 
method was "revolutionary."

"If Oklahoma is a state that does executions, we can find a better, humane way 
to carry them out," he said.

Execution by nitrogen gas is not yet a state-sanctioned method anywhere in the 
world, according to Slate. Dr. Joel Zivot, assistant professor of 
anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, previously 
told HuffPost that it's ethically impossible for doctors to conduct tests and 
verify claims on execution procedures.

"No physician is an expert in killing, and medicine doesn't position itself 
intentionally in taking a life," Zivot said. "There's no therapeutic use of 
nitrogen gas, and there's no way to ethically or practically test if nitrogen 
gas is a humane alternative."

Christian said he would be interesting in eliminating electrocution, Oklahoma's 
current 2nd alternative method of execution.

"I don't see why there's any need to have the electric chair in the 21st 
century," he said in March.

Oklahoma also authorizes the use of firing squads, only if other methods are 
found unconstitutional, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Stakes like Oklahoma are increasingly pushing forward backup methods to lethal 
injection as it faces legal pressure and supply challenges. Stores of the 
lethal injection chemicals on which states used to rely have dwindled in recent 
years as European and U.S. manufacturers cut off supply or pull their drugs 
from the market.

State corrections departments have turned to local compounding pharmacies to 
mix alternatives, but just last month the American Pharmacists Association 
spoke out to discourage pharmacists from participating in executions in any 
way.

Oklahoma in particular is at the center of a forthcoming Supreme Court decision 
for its use of the drug midazolam, which was used in the botched 2014 execution 
of inmate Clayton Lockett. All executions in Oklahoma have been stayed pending 
a ruling.

(source: Huffington Post)

*****************************

Oklahoma could execute death row inmates with nitrogen gas



Oklahoma is set to become the 1st state in the US to allow the use of nitrogen 
gas as a method of execution.

The state legislature has passed a bill, which now awaits the governor's 
signature to become law.

Several US states are considering alternative execution methods as they 
struggle to obtain lethal injection drugs amid a nationwide shortage.

Inventories dwindled after European manufacturers opposed to capital punishment 
refused to sell the drugs.

Last year a condemned inmate in Oklahoma struggled for almost an hour during a 
lethal injection execution.

It is the 1st drug applied to a prisoner during an execution, and is followed 
by two others which stop the heart and cause death. Alternatives to midazolam 
are short supply.

Under the new law, nitrogen gas chambers will become Oklahoma's primary backup 
method of execution if lethal injection drugs are unavailable or ruled 
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Electrocution and firing squad are the backup methods currently available to 
the state.

The bill was passed by the legislature without a single dissenting vote. A 
spokeswoman for Governor Mary Fallin, a strong supporter of the death penalty, 
tells BBC News Online that her decision will be announced next week.

Supporters of the bill say nitrogen gas poisoning, or nitrogen-induced hypoxia, 
is a more humane and painless way to die and requires no medical expertise to 
perform. There are no reports that it has ever been used before on humans.

The governor of Utah signed a bill on 23 March that allows death by firing 
squad as a backup option should lethal injection drugs become unavailable. The 
decision has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union as "brutal" 
and "barbaric."

Oklahoma has temporarily halted its remaining executions as the state awaits 
review by the Supreme Court.

(source: BBC news)