[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., OKLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 16




PENNSYLVANIA:

DA to seek death penalty in death of man found in burned car



A Pennsylvania district attorney is seeking the death penalty against a man 
charged with fatally shooting a man whose body was found in the trunk of burned 
car.

The defense attorney for 18-year-old Jonta Bishop, of Hagerstown, maintains 
Bishop shot 36-year-old James Deneen Jr. in self-defense. The Hyndman man was 
shot on September 25 before his body was stuffed into the car, which was then 
set on fire in Londonderry Township in south-central Pennsylvania.

But Bedford County District Attorney contends Bishop's self-defense claims are 
refused by the fact that Deneen was shot in the back of the head.

3 other people are accused of helping Bishop dispose of the body.

A judge delayed Bishop's formal arraignment Thursday after Higgins announced 
he'd seek the death penalty. That's because a death penalty-qualified attorney 
must now represent Bishop. (source: Associated Press)








OKLAHOMA:

A Paradoxical Reaction in Oklahoma----What if the greatest threat to the death 
penalty isn't its opponents, but its supporters?



In the states in which it's practiced most often, the death penalty remains 
overwhelmingly popular. The Supreme Court seems uninterested in revisiting its 
core decisions on American capital punishment, preferring instead to tinker on 
the margins of the machinery of death. In many ways, its legal and 
constitutional footing has never been more secure. One state's determination to 
execute could change that. And paradoxically, it could be the ardor of the 
death penalty's proponents, not its detractors, that imperils its 
constitutionality.

Tonight, the state of Oklahoma plans to inject 500 milliliters of midazolam in 
Charles Warner's body to sedate him, followed by 100 milliliters of pancuronium 
bromide and 240 milliequivalents of potassium chloride to kill him. Sentenced 
to death in 1999 for the rape and murder of an 11-month-old girl 2 years 
earlier, Warner has spent almost 2 decades on death row. The state originally 
scheduled his execution for April 29 last year. 2 inmates' executions were 
planned for that night. Clayton Lockett, who had been on death row since 2000, 
was to be executed 1st, and then Warner was to follow.

But Lockett's execution took a grisly turn. Witnesses later testified that the 
execution was "a bloody mess." While under sedation from midazolam, Lockett 
began moaning and writhing after being injected with the next two drugs in the 
cocktail. An improper IV placement had missed Lockett's femoral artery, pumping 
the cocktail directly into his leg and groin muscles. When the staff lifted the 
sheet (they had covered Lockett's groin to respect his dignity) and inspected 
the IV, they found blood and other fluids pooling there. Lockett died of a 
massive heart attack shortly thereafter. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin stayed 
Warner's execution in the aftermath; no executions have been performed in the 
state since then.

Lockett and Warner's executions had already caused a constitutional crisis in 
Oklahoma as their execution date neared. On April 21, the Oklahoma Supreme 
Court intervened and stayed both defendants' executions amid concerns about a 
state-secrecy law that shielded the identities of lethal injection drug 
suppliers from activists, defendants, and the public. The surprise move - 
Oklahoma's supreme court does not normally hear criminal cases - sparked 
outrage among the state's elected politicians. Governor Fallin, a Republican, 
issued an executive order the next day that scheduled a new execution date in 
direct defiance of the court's stay. State legislators also drafted a 
resolution to impeach the justices who delayed the execution. The court, whose 
9 justices include 6 Democratic appointees, backed down the next day and upheld 
the secrecy law as constitutional.

Political considerations deeply shape the death penalty in Oklahoma, where it 
remains popular even amid a nationwide decline in support. 2 months after 
Lockett's botched execution, a Tulsa World poll found that 74 % of Oklahomans 
support the death penalty. (The national average hovers somewhere around 60 %.) 
According to court documents, the state attorney general's office recommended 
the drug to Michael Oakley, the department of corrections' general counsel at 
the time, when the standard lethal-injection drugs couldn't be obtained.

"[T]he Attorney General's office, being an elective office, was under a lot of 
pressure," Oakley testified. "The staff over there was under a lot of pressure 
to say, 'Get it done,' you know." Oakley, who has no medical training, 
testified that he approved the drug after consulting general counsels in other 
states and Wikipedia.

I did have a discussion with our medical director at the time and he said, 
"Yeah Midazolam probably when administered will, will render sedation." And 
that's all he would say. Then, you know, I did my own research, I looked 
on-line, you know. Went past the key Wiki leaks, Wiki leaks or whatever it is, 
and I did find out that when administered, Midazolam would administer, would 
render a person unconscious. That's what we needed ... So we thought it was 
okay.

Warner's lawyers contend that midazolam isn't an acceptable substitute for 
sodium thiopental, the standard anesthetic used in lethal injections. They make 
a compelling case.

Although Oklahoma uses it for sedation in executions, the FDA doesn't even 
approve the use of midazolam as the sole anesthetic in standard surgical 
procedures. Because the drug has a ceiling effect, increasing the dosage does 
not necessarily increase its effectiveness. In Arizona's botched execution of 
Joseph Wood last July, where he spent nearly 2 hours gasping for air in 
apparent agony before finally dying, the state's 2-drug protocol used 750 ml of 
midazolam, a full 7 1/2 times more than Oklahoma used on Lockett last year and 
250 ml more than what will be used in Warner's execution tonight.

Even more troubling is midazolam's dark side. The drug is most often used to 
sedate patients in intensive case and to treat seizure disorders. But in 
patients with histories of aggression, substance abuse, and psychiatric 
disorders, midazolam can trigger a "paradoxical reaction," agitating the 
patients it is supposed to anesthetize. When administered during an execution, 
a drug meant to humanely sedate a death-row inmate can instead send them into a 
state of chemically-induced fear, anxiety, and aggression in their final 
moments.

Why does the anesthetic matter so much? In the 2007 case of Baze v. Rees, the 
Supreme Court sanctioned a specific 3-drug cocktail for executions. First, 
sodium thiopental is used to sedate the defendant. Next, pancuronium bromide 
induces paralysis and stops their breathing. Finally, potassium chloride stops 
the defendant's heart. Without an effective sedative, the other 2 drugs in the 
Baze cocktail - the paralytic drug and the potassium chloride - cause 
immediate, excruciating pain for the defendant. "It is uncontested that failing 
a proper dose of sodium thiopental to render the prisoner unconscious," Chief 
Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-justice majority in Baze, "there is a 
substantial, constitutionally unacceptable risk of suffocation from the 
administration of pancuronium bromide and of pain from potassium chloride."

Of the 3 drugs listed by the court, sodium thiopental is the least-used in 
standard medical practice and therefore the hardest to obtain. In recent years, 
anti-death-penalty activists and abolitionists exploited this scarcity by 
targeting its supply chain. Hospira, the last U.S. pharmaceutical company to 
market sodium thiopental, ceased production in 2011 amid pressure from Italy, 
where the drug had been manufactured. Later that year, the European Union 
banned exports of certain anesthetic drugs to the U.S. for use in lethal 
injections as part of its campaign for universal abolition of the death 
penalty. Europe's large pharmaceutical industry gives them significant 
leverage: In 2013, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon halted an execution after EU 
officials threatened to impose export controls on propofol, a common 
anesthetic, if the state used a German-made supply of it for lethal injections.

With sodium thiopental all but unavailable, states began hunting for new drugs 
to fill the gap. Some switched to 1-drug protocols, although these are also 
vulnerable to shortages: Texas, for example, now only has enough pentobarbital 
for 5 executions. Other states, like Oklahoma, simply tried to alter the 
existing 3-drug protocol with new sedatives. The medical community, by and 
large, abstains from participation in capital punishment on ethical grounds. 
The FDA also refuses to certify drugs for lethal injections. Instead, the 
cocktails are chosen by state officials who often lack medical or 
pharmacological training. A member of the European Parliament I spoke with last 
year called it human experimentation.

Will the Supreme Court intervene now? To challenge a lethal injection 
protocol's constitutionality, the condemned must establish that it "creates a 
demonstrated risk of severe pain," especially when compared to available 
alternatives. It's hard to think of a better demonstration than 3 botched 
executions with midazolam in three different states. In their brief, Warner's 
lawyers argue they've met this high threshold.

In Baze, the risks associated with the use of sodium thiopental were those 
created by inadequate dosing and maladministration. With midazolam, there is no 
dose that can reliably maintain unconsciousness at the surgical plane of 
anesthesia, and increasing the dose cannot overcome the risk. Simply put, even 
the proper administration of midazolam results in an inhumane execution.

Chief Justice Roberts noted in Baze that the Supreme Court has never struck 
down a method of execution in active use as unconstitutional. But Oklahoma's 
procedure could break that precedent.

The Supreme Court might refuse to hear this particular case, but the justices 
cannot avoid the questions raised by it forever. Death penalty proponents 
claimed that lethal injection would make executions more humane than hangings, 
electrocution, or the gas chamber. The recent spate of botched, tortuous 
executions cast doubt on that assertion. In the ultimate paradoxical reaction, 
public enthusiasm for the death penalty - and the political consequences 
thereof- may have only hastened its demise.

(source: Matt Ford, The Atlantic, Jan. 15)