[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALABAMA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 19




ALABAMA:
U.S. Supreme Court to consider Torrey McNabb execution


The fate of an inmate convicted of murdering a Montgomery police officer 20 
years ago is in the hands of the nation’s highest court.

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to 
allow Thursday’s scheduled execution of Torrey McNabb to go forward, arguing 
the inmate has failed to show that a challenge to the state’s method of 
execution is likely to succeed.

“(McNabb) offered no new evidence in support of his request for a stay, 
essentially relying on the same allegations, expert reports, and deposition 
excerpts that he attached to his complaint and that have been part of the 
record for some time,” lawyers for the Attorney General’s Office wrote.

If the high court lifts the lower court’s stay, officials will execute McNabb, 
40, on Thursday evening. McNabb’s attorneys argue that should not take place 
before a federal district court holds hearings on the inmates’ challenge.

McNabb shot Montgomery police officer Anderson Gordon III on Sept. 24, 1997 
while Gordon was in a parked police car responding to an accident. McNabb fired 
at another officer who pursued him before police captured him.  At his trial in 
January 1999, McNabb admitted to shooting Gordon and apologized to Gordon’s 
family from the witness stand. Both he and his attorneys argued that McNabb 
ingested a large amount of cocaine that day, which made him paranoid.

The jury convicted McNabb and recommended a sentence of death. That sentence 
has been upheld in federal and state courts.

Alabama executes condemned inmates using a three-drug lethal injection process. 
The inmate is first administered midazolam, which aims to render the condemned 
inmate unconscious. After a consciousness check, officials inject the inmate 
with rocuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles, and potassium chloride, 
which stops the heart.

The state has executed four inmates under the protocol since the beginning of 
2016. Three executions took place without visible incident. But Ronald Bert 
Smith gasped and coughed for 13 minutes of his 34-minute execution last 
December, a reaction similar to other botched executions involving midazolam. 
Critics say the drug cannot maintain unconsciousness in the face of high-stress 
events, such as an inmate’s pending execution.

The inmates argue for alternative methods of execution, such as large 
single-dose injections of midazolam or pentobarbital. The state argues the 
inmates have not shown those methods would be less painful, or practical.

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins dismissed the inmates’ lawsuit last November, 
but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered new hearings in the case last 
month. Citing that directive, Watkins stayed the execution of Jeffery Borden 
earlier this month and entered his stay of McNabb’s execution on Monday. A 
three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

(source: Montgomery Advertiser)