[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., UTAH, NEV., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 12



MISSOURI----impending execution

Scheduled execution illustrates paucity of justice



It might be 2015, but some Missouri official actions suggest our state at times 
remains stuck in a bygone era of accepted, unequal justice. Consider the 
planned execution Tuesday of Andre Cole, a black man convicted and sentenced to 
death by an all-white jury in St. Louis County.

Gov. Jay Nixon could help guide our state in a more enlightened direction by 
commuting Cole's death sentence or at least staying the execution and convening 
a board of inquiry to consider issues of race in Missouri's death penalty.

Those most traumatized are opposed to his execution - a consequence excessive 
for the awful violence he indeed perpetrated. He and his ex-wife, Terri Cole, 
divorced in 1995 but continued a relationship and even considered reconciling. 
In August 1998, however, they were at odds again. She had just had his paycheck 
garnished and changed her telephone number without telling him, thereby cutting 
off his ability to stay in contact with their 2 sons.

After the divorce, he usually worked 2 jobs to keep up mortgage payments on 2 
homes, including 1 where she lived. His family-law attorney had advised him to 
frequently go to her house to initiate dialogue and demonstrate his earnestness 
to resume visitation with the children. No court order barred such contact. 
Several times, she apparently declined to answer the door. On the evening of 
Aug. 21, while their children were elsewhere with friends, Cole again arrived 
there and saw a light on inside. Frustrated after she again didn't answer the 
door, he broke the glass in the back door with a tire iron and entered. He 
found her with Anthony Curtis, whom she was dating, unbeknownst to Cole. A 
struggle ensued, resulting in him stabbing Curtis several times, killing him, 
and then seriously wounding his ex-wife, who survived.

Cole committed contemptible crimes of passion, no doubt, but not a "worst of 
the worst" murder supposedly justifying a death sentence - although we contend 
only the Creator has both the means and the "right" to take any human life.

Some state officials and politicians seem to stand alone in their advocacy to 
execute Cole. Estella Curtis, Curtis' mother, told trial prosecutors she did 
not want Cole to be executed. Years ago, Terri Cole visited her ex-husband in 
prison and forgave him for his wrongdoing. She has consistently pleaded that he 
not be killed. Now dying of Lou Gehrig's disease and bedridden, she reiterated 
those sentiments last month. Their sons and grandchildren also don't need the 
trauma of potentially losing both parents (and a set of grandparents) in short 
order, if he's executed.

Human rights groups have long pressed for a review of perceived racist 
practices in St. Louis County, akin to the illuminating Department of Justice 
report released last month about Ferguson, 1 of the county's municipalities. 
Under the lead of Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, the county has 
sentenced to death more people than any other jurisdiction in the state, 
including St. Louis City, which has had 4 times more murders over the past 3 
decades. St. Louis County prosecutions have led to 12 people being executed; 9 
of them - 75 % - were black.

The county has been responsible for the 9th-greatest number of executions of 
any U.S. jurisdiction. 11 of the 33 prisoners currently living under a death 
sentence in Missouri were convicted by St. Louis County prosecutors. 7 of 
those, or 63 %, are black even though blacks constitute only 24 % of the 
county's population.

To assemble the all-white jury that convicted and recommended "death" for Cole, 
county prosecutors used their peremptory strikes to remove all three blacks 
available for jury service. They removed 1 black reportedly because he was 
divorced but did not remove a white juror who was paying child support, the 
theorized motive for Cole's crimes.

At least 3 of the black men executed in St. Louis County cases - most recently 
Herbert Smulls, whom the state killed in January 2014 - were also convicted by 
all-white juries, hardly the promised jury of one's peers.

Andre Cole would present no danger if allowed to live in prison the rest of his 
natural life. He has lived in honor dorms most of the time he has been 
incarcerated. He worked in the prison's factory until experiencing recent 
health troubles. Weakened with age, he now uses a cane.

His mental condition has substantially deteriorated. A psychiatrist has 
diagnosed him as depressed with prominent symptoms of psychosis, saying he 
hears voices constantly and lacks the capacity to understand the nature and 
purpose of the punishment about to be imposed upon him, according to his 
attorneys. Thus, he's also likely incompetent to be executed.

Please call Gov. Nixon's office at 573-751-3222 and urge him to commute Andre 
Cole's death sentence as an act of compassion or at least stay his execution 
and convene a board of inquiry to review what seems to be racist sentencing in 
our state. For more information, including about the 11 vigils set to take 
place around Missouri on Tuesday, log onto the website of Missourians for 
Alternatives to the Death Penalty (MADP) at http://madpmo.org/vigils-0.

(source: Jacob Hummel, D-St. Louis, represents District 81 in the Missouri 
House; Rep. Tom Hurst, R-Meta, represents District 62; Rep. John Rizzo, 
D-Kansas City, represents District 19; and Rep. Tommie Pierson, D-St. Louis, 
represents District 66----Columbia Daily Tribune)

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

MADP to Hold Vigil Tuesday Prior to Execution



Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (MADP) will hold a vigil Apr. 
14 as inmate Andre Cole is scheduled for execution.

Missouri prison inmate Andre Cole is scheduled to be put to death by the state 
on Tuesday, April 14.

The vigil will be from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. at Park Central Square.

Cole is scheduled for execution at 6 p.m. in the state prison at Bonne Terre.

Cole was convicted and sentenced to death in St. Louis County for the 1998 
killing of Anthony Curtis.

(source: ozarksfirst)








UTAH:

Utah's firing squad plan is another twist in America's long quest for a perfect 
execution method----The search for clean and painless executions may have 
failed, raising questions about the constitutionality of capital punishment.



Concerned that the Supreme Court may soon declare lethal injection 
unconstitutional, some states are making back-up plans.

In March, Utah's governor signed legislation that will bring back the firing 
squad as the state's official execution method in the event that injection - 
the method used by every state that still retains the death penalty - is no 
longer possible.

Utah's legislation has received a lot of attention, in part because the state 
occupies a symbolically important place in the history of the modern American 
death penalty.

In 1977, it was the first to kill anyone after a ten-year suspension of 
executions in the United States. (The Supreme Court had found the death penalty 
capriciously applied, and thus unconstitutional, in a 1972 case. But it 
permitted executions to resume four years later when states presented the Court 
with new sentencing guidelines aimed at reducing arbitrariness.)

Standing in front of five rifles poking through a slotted wall, convicted 
murderer Gary Gilmore famously uttered, "Let's do it," and with his death, the 
modern era of executions in the United States was born.

In addition, Utah has the distinction of being the only state in the past 
century to use the firing squad to kill people. Its modern use of a bloody, 
antiquated execution method has long set it apart from other states.

Why all the attention paid to Utah's firing squad plan?

Despite Utah's historical notoriety and uniqueness, the attention its back-up 
plan has received in the press in recent weeks is, from a practical standpoint, 
unwarranted.

The state has been responsible for only 6 of the 1,403 executions that have 
occurred nationally since Gilmore was put to death. Its last execution was 5 
years ago. Before that, it hadn???t killed anyone in 11 years. It is unlikely 
to execute anytime soon.

And while Utah eliminated the firing squad altogether in 2004, leaving lethal 
injection its sole method of execution, it has permitted those sentenced before 
then to be executed by gun if they so wish. Ronnie Gardner, the most recent man 
executed in Utah, chose to be shot by the state???s correctional officers in 
2010. So this new legislation is not exactly unearthing a relic from the 
distant past.

Still, the attention paid to Utah in recent weeks is important because it 
captures a national and historically unprecedented moment of disillusionment 
about the administration of the death penalty.

Utah's decision powerfully represents a dawning realisation that the cosmetic 
and humanistic concerns that have long shaped executions in the United States 
may be incompatible with one another.

The search for a quiet and humane form of execution

Since the 19th century, American elites have searched for a mode of execution 
that was professional in appearance and humane in practice, one that would 
display the state's sober-minded restraint while taking life as quickly and 
painlessly as possible.

As early as the 1830s, states began searching for ways to take the condemned 
out of this world with as little fanfare and medieval ritual as possible. 
Worried about jeering execution day crowds, elites moved executions behind 
walls and eventually into the bowels of prisons where sober decorum would 
prevail.

A complex division of tasks within the execution chamber, moreover, cleansed 
the punishment of vengeful overtones.

The "law" was no longer a local sheriff publicly carrying out a hanging on 
behalf of an aggrieved community, but multiple bureaucrats, each responsible 
for performing a small step in a highly-choreographed procedure. One tied the 
hands, another bound the feet, another secured the noose, and another pulled 
the lever to release the trap door. No single person embodied the state.

And since the 1890s, a persistent dark optimism has produced revolutions in 
killing technologies every few decades.

>From shooting and hanging to electrocuting to gassing to injecting, Americans 
have continuously introduced new killing technologies that have promised to 
minimise the discomfort, for witnesses and the condemned, caused by the state's 
exercise of its sovereign power over life and death.

The latest solution: Lethal injections

With lethal injections, 1st used by Texas in 1982 and gradually adopted by 
every other state with the death penalty, Americans thought they had finally 
arrived at a perfect solution.

What could better project an aura of professional competence and dignified 
restraint than an execution in which the condemned person looked like a patient 
being put to sleep for an operation?

But it hasn't always gone that way. Officials sometimes have trouble accessing 
inmates' veins. In 2009, Ohio officials spent 2 hours unsuccessfully trying to 
establish an IV line into Romell Broom before giving up. Broom left the 
execution chamber alive, his body punctured in 18 different sites by failed 
attempts to find a vein.

And last year, Oklahoma technicians incorrectly inserted the needle into 
Clayton Lockett's groin, missing his vein and releasing the drugs into the 
surrounding tissue. After being declared unconscious, Lockett began writhing 
and attempted to sit up. He died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the 
execution began and 7 minutes after rattled officials tried to abort it.

In response to incidents like these, attorneys for condemned inmates have 
launched a new legal attack on lethal injection.

The Court previously upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in a 2008 
decision, but much has changed since then. Cut off from European suppliers, who 
are barred by European Union regulations from selling drugs that will be used 
in executions, states have struggled in recent years to find reputable vendors 
of execution drugs. Some have revised their execution protocols altogether, 
incorporating new drugs that can be made in historically under-regulated 
domestic compounding pharmacies.

As they begin using new drugs from new sources, moreover, states continue to 
lack the expertise needed to safeguard the quality of the chemicals and ensure 
their proper use on inmates.

At its recent annual meeting, the American Pharmacists Association voted to 
discourage its members from participating in executions. Anesthesiologists, 
too, have been professionally barred from assisting prison personnel, leaving 
the condemned in the hands of under-trained technicians who lack the skills 
required to ensure that they are properly sedated when their hearts and lungs 
shut down.

As a result, the risk that lethal injection will cause preventable, excessive 
pain for the condemned may now seem unacceptably high. The Court has long held 
that while inmates are not entitled to a pain-free execution, they must not be 
subjected to "unnecessary pain."

The recent and ongoing problems faced by states trying to carry out death 
sentences may convince a majority of the Justices that lethal injection is 
inherently failure-prone and therefore unconstitutional.

A trade-off between appearance and reliability

In scrambling to come up with a plan B, officials in states like Utah are 
grappling with the fact that there may be a trade-off between an execution that 
is easy to watch when it goes according to plan and one that ends life quickly 
and reliably.

In a survey of nearly 9,000 executions that have happened in the United States, 
legal studies scholar Austin Sarat found that lethal injection was by far the 
most error-prone mode of execution of them all. While 3 % of all executions 
have been botched since 1900, over 7 % of lethal injections haven't gone 
according to plan.

Shooting people kills them more quickly and reliably than electrocuting, 
gassing, or poisoning them. But it's harder to watch or read about than lethal 
injection.

The raw violence of the act puts it at odds with the aesthetic values that have 
historically shaped the development of capital punishment in the United States. 
Guns uncomfortably blur the line between the righteous violence of the state 
and the lawless violence of the criminal. The gun is, historically speaking, 
the only instrument of execution that is also commonly used by criminals. Its 
use in executions reminds us of a past in which there was less of a distinction 
between the state that carried out the law and those it punished.

Indeed, in its jarring loudness, its bloodiness, and its mutilating effects on 
the body, execution by firing squad comes much closer to expressing the "eye 
for an eye" logic that has long stoked Americans' demand for the death penalty, 
but that has, since the nineteenth century, been carefully excised from its 
actual administration.

That, in the end, is what is most newsworthy about Utah's decision to return to 
the gun. In the violent imagery it conjures, execution by firing squad has the 
power to remind Americans of a simple truth that lethal injection has, for a 
long time, made it easy for them to forget: executions are acts of extreme, 
body-mutilating violence.

(source: scroll.in)








NEVADA:

Nevada has 80 on death row, but no place to execute



Nevada has more than 80 men on death row but no suitable place to execute them 
should the state need to carry out capital punishment, a panel of lawmakers was 
told last week.

So lawmakers again are being asked to fund a new execution chamber at Ely State 
Prison so Nevada can be prepared to carry out a lethal injection should a court 
order be issued. The facility in remote eastern Nevada is the state's only 
maximum security prison.

Greg Cox, director of the Department of Corrections, acknowledged in a budget 
hearing last week that no executions are in the offing.

But if a court orders an execution, the agency would have only between 60 and 
90 days to carry it out, he said. An execution potentially could be carried out 
at the now-decommissioned Nevada State Prison in the capital, but litigation 
over the use of the death chamber at the facility would be anticipated, he 
said.

Cox made his pitch for about $829,000 to build a new execution chamber at the 
Ely prison where Nevada's death row population is housed. The execution chamber 
and related facilities would take up 1,900 square feet of the current 
administration wing at the facility, he said.

Ely has been selected for security reasons since that is where Nevada's worst 
of the worst are housed, and no transportation would be involved for an 
execution.

Inmates on Nevada's death row include Pat McKenna, known as Nevada's most 
dangerous inmate who killed another man in jail in Clark County in 1979. 
McKenna has tried to escape several times.

Others on death row include Richard Haberstroh, who in 1986 raped and choked 
20-year-old Donna Marie Kitowski when she went to a store in Southern Nevada to 
buy ingredients to bake cookies for her 20-month-old son; and Michael Sonner, 
who in 1993 killed Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Carlos Borland.

Nevada uses only lethal injection for executions, and Cox acknowledged the 
method of execution is being litigated around the country. Obtaining the drugs 
needed to perform an execution is also a challenge, he said.

Cox said he recently became aware that the American Pharmacists Association 
decided just last month to dis???courage its members from participating in 
executions, finding that, "such activities are fundamentally contrary to the 
role of pharmacists as providers of health care."

Cox also said he learned last week that architectural firms are expected to 
avoid participating in the design of the Nevada execution chamber project.

"They are constantly peeling away this onion," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced in January that it will hear arguments this 
year regarding Oklahoma's lethal injection process using a drug called 
midazolam.

The last execution in Nevada, by lethal injection, occurred April 26, 2006, at 
the Nevada State Prison, when Daryl Mack was put to death. Mack was executed 
for the rape and murder of a Reno woman, Betty Jane May, in 1988.

Executions in Nevada are rare. There have only been 12 since the U.S. Supreme 
Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Death penalty cases are litigated in both state and federal courts and can take 
decades to finalize.

Some members of the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means joint budget 
subcommittee expressed reservations about the funding request, which is a 
repeat from the 2013 session albeit at a price nearly 20 % higher.

Chris Chimits, deputy administrator with the state Public Works Board, said a 
big reason for the increase is the supply and demand situation in the 
construction industry as the economy heats up. If the request is delayed until 
2017, the cost could reach $1 million, he said.

Chimits said the chamber would be modeled after the new facility at San Quentin 
in California, whose construction was overseen by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals.

"If we do anything it is going to be with their (the court's) approval on this 
project," he said.

Cox also said that another delay would mean there would be no new execution 
chamber for 4 years, since it is a 2-year project estimated by the Public Works 
Board.

But lawmakers noted that the current state of flux in the use of lethal 
injection nationwide might mean there is no immediate rush.

Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, said the uncertainty raises questions about 
whether the investment is worthwhile at this time.

"There are a lot of needs for our capital infrastructure dollars," he said. "I 
think that lack of certainty - and I understand it is out of our control - 
makes it difficult."

The request is part of the agency's 2015-17 budget request, which will not be 
finalized until much later in this session.

Cox said funding will be needed to keep the Nevada State Prison death chamber 
ready for use should the new project not be approved. But the current chamber, 
an old gas chamber, is not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. 
There might also be other infrastructure issues.

There is no elevator access, so a disabled inmate facing execution would have 
to be carried to the last-night cell across from the chamber.

The viewing area is cramped and provides little room for official witnesses, 
media representatives, a religious leader, victims' family members, attorneys 
and others who choose to or are required to attend executions.

The new chamber would be more than 300 miles east of Carson City. It would 
include the execution area, separate witness viewing areas and a last-night 
cell for the condemned inmate, among other features. It also would require new 
walls and the reconfiguration of heating and cooling systems, lighting, 
sprinklers and other elements.

The agency a few years ago planned a new stand-alone execution chamber at a 
prison that was never built in Southern Nevada, and that cost estimate was 
about $5 million.

Gov. Brian Sandoval is a proponent of the death penalty.

A state audit released in December found that Nevada murder cases in which 
prosecutors seek the death penalty can cost nearly twice as much as those with 
a lesser punishment.

Death penalty cases cost the public, on average, $1.03 million to $1.31 
million, according to the audit. In a murder case in which capital punishment 
is not sought, the average cost is $775,000. In those cases, prosecutors 
typically seek life in prison without parole.

The 105-page audit came after the 2013 Legislature ordered a review of the 
costs of capital punishment. The audit, which took 18 months, looked at the 
price of trials, appeals and jail time for 28 Nevada cases.

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)








USA:

The Dawn of a New Form of Capital Punishment



How death by nitrogen is emerging as a lethal injection alternative

In the weeks following the execution of Clayton Lockett, the Oklahoma death row 
inmate whose botched lethal injection triggered a statewide moratorium on 
executions, lawmakers there began rethinking their approach to capital 
punishment. Among the people they called on to help was Michael Copeland.

Copeland is a criminal justice professor at East Central University, a public 
school with about 6,000 students in Ada, Okla. From 2010 to 2013, he was the 
director of the anti-fraud unit at the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Before 
that, he was an assistant attorney general for the Republic of Palau, a small 
island nation in the Pacific Ocean. Copeland is not a doctor. He has no medical 
training. But what he does have is a close relationship with Oklahoma 
legislators, some of whom he's known for years. And they often ask Copeland to 
conduct research and gather data that could help shape bills. He's worked with 
legislators on reducing the number of uninsured motorists, for example, and 
helped draft guidelines for the transportation of the mentally ill who are a 
danger to themselves and others.

About a year ago, Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian, who attended high school with 
Copeland, asked his old friend for ideas on how to replace the increasingly 
problematic method of lethal injection. After studying the issue, Copeland 
recommended death by nitrogen, a method that has never been used for a 
state-sanctioned killing in the U.S. Nevertheless, Oklahoma lawmakers embraced 
the idea. On March 3, the state House overwhelmingly passed a bill based on 
Copeland's research that would make nitrogen asphyxiation the state's execution 
method if lethal injection is ruled unconstitutional or the necessary drugs are 
no longer available. On April 9, the Senate unanimously passed the measure, 
sending it to Republican Gov. Mary Fallin.

Fallin, who supports the death penalty, has not said whether she plans to sign 
the legislation. If she does, it would mark a new frontier in the increasingly 
charged debate about the future of capital punishment in America. And it would 
ensure that the state where lethal injection originated 3 decades ago would 
resume its place as the nation's execution laboratory.

The Problems With Lethal Injection

The idea of nitrogen asphyxiation or "nitrogen hypoxia" has been been batted 
around as a method of capital punishment for years. A 1995 National Review 
article titled "Killing With Kindness: Capital Punishment by Nitrogen 
Asphyxiation," for example, recommended that states use nitrogen gas after a 
federal district court deemed California???s gas chamber unconstitutional. But 
the method largely remained on the fringes of the capital punishment debate.

20 years later, the landscape has changed dramatically. Today, a number of 
states are facing severe lethal injection drug shortages after pharmaceutical 
companies stopped providing drugs for the procedure. Texas, for example, is 
down to enough pentobarbital for just a handful of executions. Legislators in 
Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia have introduced legislation to bring back the 
electric chair because of problems obtaining drugs, while Utah has resurrected 
the firing squad. And looming over it all is a Supreme Court case this summer 
involving Oklahoma's 3-drug protocol. The court's decision could potentially 
force states to abandon lethal injection altogether.

"The problem we're having in Oklahoma now and several other states is that 
while lethal injections used to be an effective and humane way to execute 
someone, it's really not anymore," Copeland says. "The facts on the ground have 
changed. Now it's like an experiment every time. Here's some drugs and maybe 
we'll have a paramedic administer it and let's see what happens. Maybe this 
will kill 'em. It's kind of haphazard, and I think it's only going to get 
worse."

No one could've foreseen lethal injection's problems in 1977, when an Oklahoma 
legislator asked Dr. Jay Chapman, the state medical examiner, to develop what 
was intended to be a more humane execution alternative to firing squads. 
Chapman developed a 3-drug cocktail that soon became the default method of 
executions nationwide. But by 2010, European drug makers acceded to pressure 
from death penalty opponents and stopped selling drugs for use in executions. 
As supplies dwindled, states scrambled to figure out how to keep killing 
without the 3 drugs they had long relied on: sodium thiopental, a sedative; 
pancuronium bromide, a paralytic agent; and potassium chloride, a compound that 
stops the heart.

Some states switched to using just one drug, often pentobarbital, a 
barbiturate. Others began using midazolam, a sedative that has been scrutinized 
by some anesthesiologists for not being strong enough to properly induce 
unconsciousness and is at the heart of the upcoming Supreme Court case. Many 
states have turned to compounding pharmacies, which are unregulated by the 
federal government, for their supply while passing secrecy laws to keep those 
drug makers shielded from public view.

Last year, there were three executions widely considered botched, all of which 
included the sedative midazolam. Dennis McGuire, an Ohio inmate convicted of 
rape and murder, died after reportedly snoring and snorting during his lethal 
injection. Joseph Wood, an Arizona inmate, reportedly gasped on the gurney in 
an execution that took nearly 2 hours. And in Oklahoma, Lockett died in a 
lethal injection that went so awry that documents obtained by the Tulsa World 
show that Lockett essentially helped his executioners find a vein after they 
failed multiple times to insert IVs into his arms and legs. It was that chaotic 
scene that sent Oklahoma legislators on the search for an alternative.

The Search For A Better Way to Kill

Copeland says there were 4 main criteria he tried to meet in recommending a new 
execution method: 1) it had to be humane; 2) it couldn't have supply problems; 
3) it had to be simple to administer; 4) it could be done without medical 
professionals. Nitrogen, Copeland says, satisfies all 4.

The method would likely consist of a gas mask that covers the head and neck, 
which would be filled with pure nitrogen from a nearby canister. That nitrogen 
would displace the oxygen, leading to death by oxygen deprivation, says Solomon 
Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School who is not involved in 
the Oklahoma bill.

The method's supporters cite accidental deaths that were reportedly peaceful - 
such as divers who took in too much nitrogen and pilots whose oxygen levels 
fell too low - as evidence of the chemical's efficacy. Nitrogen hypoxia has 
also been recommended by some advocates of euthanasia in places without 
so-called right to die laws. The gas is also relatively cheap and abundant, 
decreasing concerns about supply problems.

"Execution via nitrogen hypoxia is a painless form of capital punishment that 
is simple to administer, doesn't depend upon the aid of the medical community, 
and is not subject to the supply constraints we are faced with when using the 
current 3-drug cocktail protocol," State Rep. Mike Christian, who wrote the 
House bill authorizing nitrogen gas, said in an e-mail.

Copeland says that physicians, who declined to testify in front of state 
legislators, confirmed for a 14-page study he co-authored that a lack of oxygen 
would lead someone to pass out within about 15 seconds, halt brain waves within 
30 to 45 seconds and stop the heart within 2 to 3 minutes. In September, 
Copeland presented his findings to the Oklahoma House Judiciary Committee. His 
presentation included YouTube videos of people passing out from too much 
helium, another inert gas. Pilots testified about experiencing hypoxia, 
describing the gradual decrease of oxygen as undetectable, and Copeland claims 
the effects with nitrogen would be similar.

"We have a lot of parallels," Copeland says. "We've just never used [nitrogen] 
in this context."

Changing the context could prove problematic. Administrating the gas within a 
prison is much different than the instances in which pilots and divers have 
slowly and accidentally experienced a lack of oxygen. Dr. Michael Weiden, a 
pulmonary expert at NYU School of Medicine, says that while nitrogen could be 
administered without medical professionals, using it for capital punishment 
could create an ironic consequence: the need for sedation.

"What's going to prevent someone from holding their breath and prolonging their 
execution?" says Weiden, who supports the death penalty for certain crimes. 
"People are going to hold their breath as the oxygen leaks out of their bodies. 
They'll struggle, and somebody who thinks that an individual who's asphyxiating 
will not freak out without sedation is foolish."

The American Medical Association's ethical guidelines require that "physicians 
can only certify death, provided that the condemned has been declared dead by 
another person,"according to spokesman R.J. Mills. The association does not 
have a position on the Oklahoma bill.

Despite the unanswered questions, more states appear to be considering nitrogen 
as they plan for a future without lethal injection. Copeland says he has been 
in touch with corrections officials in several states, some of which he says 
are "ahead of us in terms of protocol." Copeland would not disclose the states.

Oklahoma Sen. Anthony Sykes, who sponsored the nitrogen bill in the state 
Senate, says Louisiana and Texas have both shown interest in the method. 
Louisiana Department of Corrections Secretary James LeBlanc told a legislative 
committee last year that "nitrogen is the next big thing" and described it as a 
"painless way to go." In February, the state's corrections department issued a 
report recommending nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method of execution.

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice would not confirm 
that the state was considering alternative execution methods.

To some lethal injection experts the interest in nitrogen has familiar echoes 
of the discussion nearly 40 years ago, when states were contemplating methods 
other than firing squads and gas chambers.

"It looks fool-proof," says Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham 
University who opposes the death penalty over what she says is its inequitable 
application in the U.S. "It's easy to look at these incidents in a non-prison 
setting and say they die humanely. But implementing that into a prison setting, 
the conditions aren't the same. The people doing this aren't the same."

Corrections officials have varied levels of training and experience with lethal 
injection, which can lead to the sorts of errors that contributed to Lockett's 
prolonged execution. Denno cautions that the same problems could happen with 
the administration of nitrogen.

Richard Dieter, the senior program director of the Death Penalty Information 
Center, an anti-death penalty group, says Oklahoma would essentially be 
conducting another experiment if it went adopted nitrogen hypoxia.

"This method has never been used before in an execution," Dieter says. "I think 
it's premature to accept a legislator's promise that all will go well. It's one 
thing to say that people have died of oxygen deprivation and another to strap 
an unwilling subject in a chamber and watch the reactions and resistance for 
the 1st time."

In Oklahoma, the focus is now on Fallin, who has so far declined to comment on 
the subject. If she vetoes the bill and Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol is 
found unconstitutional this summer, the state may have to abandon the idea of a 
new form of execution altogether. Instead, Oklahoma could follow the recent 
lead of other states and return to methods that were all but abandoned decades 
ago.

"You got to remember that if this doesn't pass, the alternative is not to go 
back to lethal injection," Copeland says. "If for some reason lethal injection 
either becomes unavailable or it's unconstitutional, we go to the electric 
chair. Maybe you don't believe in the death penalty, but certainly you believe 
that if we're going to have a death penalty, it should be done in a humane way. 
And I think [nitrogen] is better than the electric chair by a wide margin."

(source: TIME)

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

Slow-motion justice



Justice has been done in Boston, but it's not finished.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been found guilty in the Boston Marathon terrorism 
bombing.

The verdict Wednesday was no surprise.

Everyone in the country already knew that Tsarnaev and his dead brother planted 
2 bombs in the crowd at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.

Even Tsarnaev's defense team acknowledged that he took part in the act of 
domestic terrorism that killed 3 and wounded 260 others.

After 16 days and 95 witnesses, it took the jury just 11 hours to render their 
verdict on the 30 federal counts against the 21-year-old.

Gulity, guilty, guilty .... 17 of those guilty verdicts carried death 
penalties.

Tsarnaev's lawyers knew that 30-0 guilty verdict was coming. Their only hope 
has always been to save him from the death penalty.

For the next several weeks, during the sentencing phase of the trial, they'll 
try to persuade the 7 women and 5 men of the jury that their client's miserable 
young life should be spared.

He had a bad home life. He was made fun of in school. He was under the control 
of his evil older brother who did all the planning and force-fed him radical 
Islamist ideology.

It might work. If just 1 juror out of 12 votes against the death penalty, 
Tsarnaev will be spared and he'll get life without parole instead.

That would be a shame, because I really hope he gets the chair - or whatever 
method federal prosecutors end up choosing if the time comes.

I also hope to God that if he is sentenced to die, justice is carried out as 
fast as possible.

Otherwise, the whole country - but especially the families of the dead and the 
physically and psychologically battered survivors of the bombing - will be kept 
waiting while the legal appeals process drags on.

It's already been too long. It's been almost 2 years since Tsarnaev was caught.

The names of the 3 innocents his bombs killed - Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu and 
Martin Richard, who was 8 - have been largely forgotten by the rest of us.

Has anyone outside Boston ever heard the names of the 17 people who had their 
arms or legs blown off?

Meanwhile, the name Tsarnaev - a name that should be forgotten by the world as 
soon as possible - haunts the whole country.

It must be hell in Boston. As long as he is alive, his victims will be forced 
to relive the worst moments of their lives over and over as his appeal crawls 
through the judicial process.

Even if he gets the death penalty, it won't happen quick. It never does, except 
maybe in Texas.

No matter how obviously guilty a murderer is, or how horrible their crime was, 
justice drags on and on. Especially on the federal level.

Since the federal government reinstated the death penalty in 1988, it has 
sentenced 74 people to death.

Today 61 remain on the federal government's death row. About 35 have been there 
at least 10 years. 3 of those death sentences have been carried out.

Many of the people Tsarnaev hurt and their families will die of old age before 
the justice system gets around to giving him what he deserves, even if it's 
death.

I don't want Tsarnaev to be alive 10 years from now.

I wish they could just take him out back of the courthouse tomorrow, shoot him 
or hang him, and get it over with. But that won't happen.

Giving him a life sentence is a waste of money, but it might be the best and 
quickest way to rid ourselves of Tsarnaev forever.

We'd never see his face or hear his name in the news again until he dies.

And if we're real lucky, that happy event will come sooner than later.

(source: Opinion; Michael Reagan----The Leaf-Chronicle)