U.S.: Execution drug supply is running low, and states are looking for lethal backup plans

Texas Death Chamber

Nitrogen chamber? Firing squad? Electric chair?

A bulky wooden chair outfitted with leather straps sits in Huntsville's Texas Prison Museum, still fully functional, but unused in its faux death chamber. But before its retirement in 1964 this electric chair, dubbed Old Sparky, carried out 361 executions. For visitors, the chair stands as an illustration of how far Texas has advanced in capital punishment - a relic of what some consider past barbarism. But with a dwindling supply of lethal injection drugs in the U.S., states have started looking to bygone execution methods - not unlike Old Sparky - as a backup plan.

If Texas goes through with Kent Sprouse's execution April 9, it will have exhausted its last dose of pentobarbital, the lethal injection drug it has used since 2012. That leaves the state, which has the macabre distinction of being the nation's leading executioner, with 3 more April executions and no plan as to how to carry them out. Jason Clark, a spokesperson with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the department is "exploring all options, including the continued use of the pentobarbital or alternate drugs."

But could "all options" also include plugging Old Sparky back in?

That's what officials in other states are considering. This month, Alabama's House of Representatives voted on a bill that, in case of a continued drug shortage, would bring back the electric chair. And in May, the Tennessee Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the state's attempt to bring back the electric chair.

And if the electric chair sounds antiquated in this age of lethal injection, just consider the firing squad.

The Utah state legislature passed a bill this month that would reauthorize death by a firing squad if lethal injection drugs cannot be secured 30 days before an inmates' scheduled execution. Rep. Paul Ray, the bill's sponsor, decided to draft it after he learned last year that Utah had no execution drugs.

"It became apparent at that time that we needed a plan B just in case," Ray said. "We're still 2 or 3 years out on our next execution, but my thought was, 'Well, let's get something in place now. Just in case we need it, it'll be there.'"

Legislation to allow firing squads in Arkansas also was introduced this year, along with a failed attempt in Wyoming. Oklahoma, meanwhile, is toying with a new take on the gas chamber. The Oklahoma House passed a bill earlier in March that would allow nitrogen chamber executions. Like its predecessor, nitrogen chambers would involve an airtight chamber, but instead of filling it with poison gas, the nitrogen would cause death by asphyxiation.

But it isn't some nostalgia for brutality fueling this wave of states seemingly backpedaling on progress. It's increasingly becoming a necessity. A recent GAO report shows that the U.S. faces a widespread drug shortage that started in 2007.

As the stock of drugs began to dwindle, few domestic suppliers were able to to keep up with the deadly demand. So states turned to European pharmacies. It turned out to be a temporary fix, as 1 by 1 Italian, German and Dutch suppliers cut off drugs supplies when they discovered they were being used to kill. The companies' bans reflect a larger cultural difference - the U.S. is the only Western country that still carries out executions.

Keeping dates with death

But if the aim was to stymie executions, the plan looks like it backfired.

"Our hand has kind of been forced without the availability of drugs," Ray said. "There's still support for the death penalty, so you have to have a way to do that."

He continued, "The interesting thing is that these companies in Europe are opposed to the death penalty so they withhold these drugs. They seem to be opposed to the firing squad over there. But they're the reason we're using the firing squad. They need to understand that they might not like what we're doing, but they're the reason we're doing it."

Most of the state legislation, however, is nothing but the sketching of a backup plan. Still, with the clock ticking for 2015's roster of death row inmates, 10 across the country and 6 in the state, Texas needs a solution - fast. Even for trigger-happy Texas, it's unlikely that there will be a sudden shift to another form of execution - or at least not in the next month. Meghan Ryan, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, pointed out that even if states dodge the problems that lethal injections pose, new methods would be open to judicial scrutiny.

"The problem with going to other methods of execution is that there are potentially constitutional concerns about that, just like there are constitutional concerns about what states are doing now in experimenting with different lethal injection cocktails," Ryan said. "We're sort of in a state of uncertainty regarding executions in general."

Ryan said that the state push for lethal injection alternatives could hit a snag under the Eighth Amendment's bar on cruel and unusual punishment. It is unclear if bringing old techniques out of retirement when lethal injections exist would hold up in court.

"The idea that punishments ought to be evolving toward more humane methods of execution suggests that moving backward, such as toward the electric chair or firing squad, might be questionable or possibly unconstitutional," Ryan said.

Texas does have a stockpile of the sedative midazolam that it could adopt into its protocol with the stroke of a pen. But the controversial drug, which replaced the depleted sodium thiopental in some states' drug cocktails, has been used in 3 botched executions. Most notably, it was part of the horrific death of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett last April, which drew worldwide attention to lethal injection practices.

"Every Department of Corrections in the country is looking at all of this," said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and expert on lethal injections. "They're very aware that if they do anything wrong, and they're so capable of it, that this is going to set into motion a series of questions about this entire process."

And if midazolam's link to botched executions wasn't enough, there's the upcoming Supreme Court case brought by three Oklahoma death row inmates that centers on the drug. The case, which is set to be argued April 29, has already led judges in Florida and Oklahoma to halt executions until the court reaches a decision. So for now, it seems that midazolam's reputation will keep Texas - or any other state - from touching its stash.

"My sense is that they're probably scrambling to find a compounding pharmacy in this country that would make more pentobarbital for them. That would be my 1st guess," Denno said.

The long-term solution to lethal injection drug shortages will take time and likely many court battles to sort out. But it's time that Texas, at least, doesn't have - unless it wants to do what Ohio did when it halted executions indefinitely after one was botched in 2014. The chances of that in the Lone Star state? Slim, especially since there have been no efforts for the state to take a break from its busy schedule.

"Knowing the history of Texas and other states that are advocates of capital punishment, I think they will do what they can to try to keep executions in line and on schedule," Ryan said.

Much like the rest of the country, the next steps for Texas are unclear. The Supreme Court's guidance on midazolam usage could clear pathways for states to use the drug. On the flip side, it could completely bar it, sending the U.S. on another pharmaceutical scramble. Or perhaps the frustration of switching from one drug to another, each step taken with unsure footing, will lead states to alternatives like in Utah.

Meanwhile, Old Sparky is still on display.

Source: Commercial Appeal, March 22, 2015

The drugs don't work

Utah's "firing squad chair" used for the 2010 execution
of convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner

When lethal injection gets tricky, try guns or gas

In 1996 the state of Utah put John Albert Taylor, a man who had raped and murdered an 11-year-old girl, to death by firing squad. Chris Zimmerman, a retired police officer who investigated the murder, witnessed the execution. "Off to our left was Mr Taylor, off to the right, behind a wall, was the firing squad," he remembers. "There was a countdown, and the firing squad were ordered to aim and fire. I heard a simultaneous explosion - you couldn't tell the guns apart. He clenched his fists, his chest rose a little, like it was suddenly filled with gas. Then he unclenched his fists, the doctor walked out with a stethoscope and checked his pulse, and it was over."

Since 1976, when capital punishment was brought back in the United States, only 3 people have been executed by firing squad in America - all in Utah. The state banned the method in 2004 (though since the law did not apply to past cases, another man was shot in 2010). But on March 10th its legislature passed a law to bring back the guns. Utah is one of several states trying to ensure it can kill people if lethal injection, the preferred modern way, is not available. To the relief of abolitionists, not many are succeeding.

Lethal injection has been becoming more controversial, and trickier, since 2011, when the European Commission banned the sale of eight drugs if the purpose was to use them in executions. Many manufacturers, including American ones, fearing bad publicity as well as regulatory problems, stopped making or supplying drugs too. The result has been an acute shortage of the chemicals with which it is legally possible to execute people in most of the 32 states that still have the death penalty. Last year 35 people were executed in America, the fewest since 1994.

Several states have tried to acquire drugs in other ways - typically from crude "compounding pharmacies". But since this has not always worked, they must find alternatives. In Oklahoma, where a botched lethal injection took 43 awful minutes to kill a prisoner last year, the state House on March 3rd overwhelmingly approved a bill to allow the state to execute people by gassing them with nitrogen. On March 12th the Alabama House voted to reintroduce the electric chair. In Wyoming, the state House has passed a bill to bring back firing squads. Several states now also keep the names of their lethal-drug-suppliers secret, to protect them from protests.

So far, however, few alternatives have passed into law. Several states retain the option of the electric chair, and a few the use of hanging, but such executions are now extremely rare, and almost only because the prisoner requests it (the last man to die by the electric chair was in Virginia in 2013). Wyoming's bill on firing squads was held up by a debate about whether prisoners should be sedated, and ultimately failed; Utah's barely made it to a vote, and may yet be vetoed by the governor. Only in Tennessee has a law reintroducing the electric chair made it on to the books.

While executions are held up, some 3,000 condemned prisoners are left unsure of their fate. While waiting, they are in effect serving life sentences of solitary confinement, with few visitors allowed. Their number, however, is gently declining. In 2013, the latest year for which figures are available, more prisoners were removed from death row than were executed, mostly because their sentences had been commuted to life.

The problem with resurrecting older methods of execution, says Robert Dunham, the head of the Death Penalty Information Centre, an NGO, is that they will instantly be challenged as unconstitutional "cruel and unusual punishment" - creating as much delay as the drugs shortage. This is why many states moved away from the electric chair in the first place. In addition, polls suggest that even death-penalty supporters are squeamish about most alternatives to lethal injection. "Don't we care about how Utah is perceived in the country and in this world?", asked 1 Utah state representative in the firing-squad debate. Notoriously, the state was the 1st to seize its chance to execute a criminal after 1976. The case of Gary Gilmore caused a media sensation; and so did the state's latest use of the firing squad in 2010.

In reality, insists Mr Zimmerman, shooting is hardly more barbaric than poisoning with drugs. "There was no blood. He died so quickly he didn't bleed," he says of Taylor's execution. But whatever the alternatives, free-flowing drugs are not returning. On April 9th Texas is expected to use its last dose of pentobarbital, its preferred drug; earlier this month Georgia delayed an execution to check the quality of its supply. Death's proponents are not giving up, but life is getting harder.

Source: The Economist, March 22, 2015

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Can Executions Be More Humane?

A law professor suggests an untested procedure as an alternative to lethal injection.

Michael Copeland has a unique resume: former Assistant Attorney General of the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau, professor of criminal justice at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma - and now, the proponent of a new execution method he claims would be more humane than lethal injection.

Copeland is one of the brains behind House Bill 1879 proposed by Oklahoma State Representative Mike Christian. The bill, passed by the Oklahoma House last week, would make "nitrogen hypoxia" a secondary method to lethal injection. Oklahoma State Senator Anthony Sykes will be introducing it to the senate shortly.

Copeland explained the execution method last September to the Oklahoma House Judiciary Committee at Christian's invitation. Copeland says that Christian had been suggesting the firing squad, but Copeland thought there might be a better way. Along with 2 other professors from East Central University, Christine C. Pappas and Thomas M. Parr, he is drafting a white paper about the benefits of nitrogen-induced hypoxia over lethal injection.

This isn't Oklahoma's 1st time engineering new execution methods. The modern lethal-injection protocol was first proposed by an Oklahoma state medical examiner named Jay Chapman in 1977. But Copeland, who spends most of his time teaching criminal justice policy, procedure, and research methods, has no background in medicine. This is his first foray into execution technologies.

Hypoxia occurs when a person lacks an adequate supply of oxygen. "Normally, the air we breathe is 79 % nitrogen and 21 % oxygen," Copeland explains. Nitrogen hypoxia during an execution "would be induced by having the offender breathing a gas mixture of pure nitrogen." Copeland points out that "nitrogen is an inert gas, and therefore doesn't actually cause the death. It is the lack of oxygen that causes death."

According to Copeland, death from nitrogen hypoxia is painless. "In industrial accidents, it often happens because the victim does not know they are in a hypoxic environment," he said. "That suffocating feeling of anxiety and discomfort is not associated with hypoxic deaths." He says nitrogen-induced hypoxia is well-researched, although the ideal delivery system for an execution has not yet been established. 2 ideas include a medical-grade oxygen tent around the head or a facemask similar to those used by firefighters.

The condemned person might not even know when the "the switch to pure nitrogen occurs, instead he would simply lose consciousness about 15 seconds after the switch was made," he added. "Approximately thirty seconds later, he would stop producing brain waves, and the heart would stop beating about 2 to 3 minutes after that."

Since the botched execution of Clayton Lockett last April, Oklahoma's death row has been in the national spotlight. Lockett died 43 minutes after the process began - far longer than a typical lethal injection - and appeared to writhe in pain. The Supreme Court is now reviewing the state's lethal-injection protocol to determine whether or not it is humane. Meanwhile, three scheduled executions in the state have been postponed.

Copeland says that conditions for lethal-injection executions will only get worse. States are scrambling to find the drugs and the health professionals to use them, and both are required for lethal injection to take place. "You have anti-death penalty zealots around the globe that protest, that bring attention to the manufacturers of these drugs," Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt told a local chamber of commerce last summer. Pruitt said that as long as activists pressure manufacturers, there will be supply issues.

As more drug manufacturers create end-user agreements that prevent states from using their drugs for executions, departments of corrections are searching for other ways to carry out death sentences. The situation is acute. Last week, Akorn became the latest drug company to make rules about how certain drugs are used, South Carolina announced it had run out of drugs, and Texas said it had only one dose of pentobarbital remaining.

Oklahoma is not alone in its quest for new execution methods. The electric chair is Tennessee's new backup method, while Utah will use the firing squad if lethal injection is not possible. Other states, including Louisiana and Oklahoma, are researching methods involving gas. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 4 states have gas chambers as backups to lethal injection: Arizona, California, Missouri, and Wyoming.

From its 1st use in the execution of Gee Jon in Nevada in 1924 to its link to Nazi gas chambers, lethal gas as method of execution has a problematic history. American lethal-gas executions typically used hydrogen cyanide as the mechanism of death. Inmates were strapped to chairs in gas chambers and the ensuing chemical reaction would cause visible signs of pain and discomfort: skin discoloration, drooling, and writhing.

But nitrogen hypoxia would likely not produce the gruesome deaths that resulted from cyanide gas executions. Copeland says that "you don't have to worry about someone reacting differently." The condemned person would feel slightly intoxicated before losing consciousness and ultimately dying.

Other death-penalty experts are more skeptical. "It's only been partially vetted, superficially researched, and has never been tried," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "Using it would be an experiment on human subjects." State death rows would be strapping someone down without any idea what would happen next, he feared.

"We'd need testimony from the best experts on this," Dieter says. "Right now, this is sailing through a legislature and not a peer-review process. I'm no doctor, but let's hear from them. I don't completely dismiss the idea that this could become approved or that it's as good as they say because lethal injection is in a bind."

If the bill becomes law and Oklahoma successfully executes someone using this method, it could spread from to state very quickly, Dieter says. Older methods like firing squads are a little too brutal for the American public, but something new could be accepted. If so, he says, "it could lead to an awkward spurt of executions."

Copeland says he is not a death penalty absolutist. "I think the state has a unique obligation for justice - it's the state's obligation," he explains. "But I don't think the death penalty is a deterrent compared to life without parole." If we must have the death penalty, he argues, it should be humane.

"Nitrogen is ubiquitous. The process is humane, it doesn't require expertise, and it's cheap."

Christine C. Pappas, one of Copeland's co-researchers, echoes this point. In an email exchange, she said that if the Supreme Court invalidates lethal injection as an execution method, it would not necessarily mean the end of the death penalty. States could find other ways to kill. "If we are to have the death penalty, which is something that Oklahomans really want, I believe it should be as painless as possible," she argues. Pappas is opposed to capital punishment and says she's faced criticism from abolitionists who think she's in league with death-penalty advocates.

"What's missing is the question of whether or not we should be executing people at all," said Ryan Kiesel, the executive director of the Oklahoma ACLU and a former 3-term member of the state House of Representatives. He argues that the state legislature is missing the big picture. "Instead, we're having this bizarre academic exercise with professors playing doctors dressed up as executioners. Behind all of those masks, there's no legitimate expertise to help legislators consider this method."

Kiesel says they need to step back and take a look at facts that are, in his words, an indictment of the death penalty itself. He points to the central role that race and class play into death sentences and to Oklahoma's 10 death-row exonerations. Those factors, he argues, should give legislators pause. "It's a fool's errand to inject humanity into something that at its very core is a brutal act," he added. "You can't make it more humane."

But Copeland thinks that it is death penalty abolitionists who have made executions inhumane by restricting access to drugs. It will only get worse. Some corrections officials at the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections agree. On February 18, they submitted a report to the state House of Representatives proposing the use of nitrogen-induced hypoxia and cited Copeland's forthcoming paper.

Source: The Atlantic, March 20, 2015

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Indonesia: Lindsay Sandiford continues to decline Foreign Office support as execution date looms

Lindsay Sandiford in her Kerobokan death row cell

Sandiford, who is originally from Redcar, is due to be killed by firing squad for smuggling 1.6m pounds worth of cocaine into Bali.

The 58-year-old claims she was forced to transport it under duress because her son's life was being threatened by a drugs trafficking gang.

Last month, she was sent a letter from Indonesian prosecutors, informing her she could face a firing squad as early as March.

She claims to have received little help from the Foreign Office since her arrest but the office disputes this, saying it had consistently provided and offered consular support to Sandiford, which she is currently declining to accept.

And today, a Foreign Office spokesperson confirmed that remained the case, with no updates on her situation.

"Mrs Sandiford had regular contact with our consular officials in Bali until September 2014, at which point she declined to accept any further support. We stand ready to offer her consular assistance."

Sandiford was found with the cocaine when she arrived in Bali from Thailand in May 2012. Without legal representation, she has been unable to fully challenge her death penalty and the right to file for clemency.

Last month, British foreign secretary Philip Hammond, while on a visit to Indonesia, raised the UK government's opposition to the death penalty in a meeting with vice-president Jusuf Kall and foreign minister Ibu Retno.

Her sister, Hilary Parsons, was also reported to have gone to Bali with three lawyers in a bid to try and save her.

But so far, there has been no public suggestion of any change in Indonesia???s stance regarding Sandiford.

A spokeswoman for human rights group Reprieve, which issued various press releases about Sandiford in the months after her detention, said today they have been "instructed not to speak about the case."

Source: gazettelive.co.uk, March 19, 2015

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Somalia: 3 alleged Al-Shabaab members executed in Puntland

Three Al-Shabaab militants were executed by firing squad
in Somalia in August 2014 (file photo)

Authorities in Somalia's semi-autonomous region on Monday executed 3 convicted al-Shabaab suspects for alleged membership in the armed extremist group al-Shabaab and plotting attacks in the stable region, officials said.

3 men were executed by firing squad after a military tribunal found them guilty of carrying out attacks in the region blamed on al-Shabaab extremists.

"All of them have been found guilty of being members of the terrorists," said the Minister of Security Hassan Osman Alore.

The alleged members were sentenced to death by the court last month.

In recent years, Puntland authorities have launched a massive crackdown on the network and its military has sentenced members and other individuals linked to the terror group tough punishments such as death penalty.

Source: horseedmedia.net, March 17, 2015

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The free-market case for opposing the death penalty

"The Walls" Unit, Huntsville, Texas

There are lots of ways to execute a prisoner. But in the U.S., at least, the 32 states that still execute prisoners have decided on lethal injection. On its face, lethal injection seems like a clinical, modern, hopefully low-pain, and usually low-key way to kill somebody. Except when it isn't, as we saw in last year's crop of botched executions.

The prolonged, evidently painful deaths of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma,Joseph Wood in Arizona, and Dennis McGuire in Ohio were tied to experimental drug cocktails necessitated by a shortage of traditional death drugs. This shortage is due largely to a ban by European countries on exporting certain drugs to U.S. states that practice capital punishment.

The free market is making a case against capital punishment. So far, the states that actively execute prisoners have been willfully plugging their ears.

But now, Texas is down to its last dose of pentobarbital, the lethal injection drug it has used since 2012. As other states' supplies of proven drugs dry up, they're working toward dusting off old methods — firing squad (Wyoming, Utah), the electric chair (Tennessee), and even the gas chamber (Oklahoma).

Providing lethal injection drugs to state prisons is so toxic that no European country will do it and no American company is willing to do it openly. Gunmakers and abortion clinics advertise their services, but pharmacies and drugmakers won't publicly associate with a form of punishment approved of by 63 percent of Americans.

That's the market talking, and it's saying it wants no part of this.

The American Board of Anesthesiologists and the American Medical Association prohibit their members from helping administer capital punishment.

If you believe in free-market capitalism — and presumably a good number of the 76 percent of Republicans who favor capital punishment do — then the scarcity of lethal injection drugs should be a signal that life without parole may be a better option.

But, you may argue, what about the other forms of execution? Well, states are only returning to them reluctantly. And the reason seems to be that shooting people, hanging them, electrocuting them, and gassing them are too flamboyantly deathly for many Americans.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Week, Peter Weber, March 16, 2015

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Legal Fight Reopens Over Woman's Execution in Georgia

Kelly Gissendaner in her death row cell

Lawyers for Kelly Gissendaner use botched attempt to argue for a stay

Lawyers for a woman awaiting execution in Georgia are asking a federal court to stay her death sentence in the wake of a botched attempt to carry it out.

Kelly Gissendaner's planned execution has been postponed twice over the past 2 weeks: first in late February due to a winter storm, then in the 1st week of March because the drug that was to be used for her execution looked unusually cloudy.

Her supporters are using the postponements to revive pleas that her life be spared, though state and federal officials have declined such appeals in her case several times. She is the only woman on death row in Georgia and would be the 1st woman to be executed in the state in 70 years.

Ms. Gissendaner has admitted to persuading a man with whom she was involved to kill her husband, Doug Gissendaner, in 1997. She was convicted of murder the following year. The man received life in prison without parole in exchange for testifying against Ms. Gissendaner.

Lawyers for Ms. Gissendaner have said in various court filings that she should receive life in prison. They didn't return calls or emails for comment this past week.

The family of her late husband says her execution would bring long-overdue justice.

On Monday, Ms. Gissendaner's lawyers filed suit in U.S. District Court in Atlanta against Georgia Department of Corrections officials, asking for her sentence to be stayed while state execution protocols and procedures are investigated. In the complaint, the lawyers argue the hours of delay involved in the drug-related postponement in early March subjected Ms. Gissendaner to "mortal fear" and violated a prohibition in the U.S. Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment.

"Ms. Gissendaner endured hours of unconstitutional torment and uncertainty - to which she had not been sentenced - while Defendants dithered about whether they could execute her," the lawyers said in the filing.

The lawyers also challenged a 2013 law that declares the manufacturer of any lethal drug used in executions a state secret, arguing that under the law, the public can't know if the drugs are being made and administered to avoid cruel and unusual punishment.

Death-penalty procedures have come under increased scrutiny nationwide in recent years. A few executions have been botched, including a high-profile case in Oklahoma, as some states turned to alternative drug protocols amid a nationwide shortage of traditional lethal-injection drugs. Some pharmaceutical firms have stopped selling them to states, saying they were uncomfortable being linked to executions.

That development, as well as a recent U.S. Supreme Court case by death-row inmates challenging the constitutionality of Oklahoma's lethal-injection protocols, is spurring states to consider alternatives. On Tuesday, Utah legislators approved a bill to allow firing squads for executions. This past week, the Alabama House voted to keep execution drug-suppliers secret and to bring back use of the electric chair if lethal injections can't be performed.

The Georgia Department of Corrections has postponed all executions while officials analyze what happened with the drug prepared for Ms. Gissendaner's execution, said spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan. Once the department is ready to resume executions, a state court would have to reissue a new execution order specifically for Ms. Gissendaner, Ms. Hogan said. "The time frame is unknown," she said.

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles, a 5-member body appointed by the governor that has sole authority to grant clemency in Georgia, has declined Ms. Gissendaner's requests for clemency twice.

The state attorney general's office hasn't yet replied to the latest complaint and a spokeswoman had no comment on the case.

While in prison, Ms. Gissendaner has studied theology, earning a degree and corresponding with religious thinkers. As her execution approached, ministers and others opposing the death penalty wrote letters to the state and signed online petitions urging mercy.

The victim's family has steadfastly urged that the sentence be carried out. "Doug is the true victim of this pre-meditated and heinous crime," the family said in a statement last week. "We, along with our friends and supporters and our faith, will continue fighting for Doug until he gets the justice he deserves no matter how long it takes."

The latest woman to be executed in Georgia was Lena Baker, a black maid who was electrocuted in 1945 for killing her white male employer. In 2005, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles issued her a posthumous pardon, calling the 1945 board decision to ignore her claims of self-defense "a grievous error."

Source: Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2015

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Bali Nine duo to go through "assimilation process" to prepare them for the firing squad

Myuran Sukumaran, Self portrait, Feb./Mar. 2015

The Bali Nine pair and other prisoners facing execution will be put through an "assimilation" process to mentally prepare them for the firing squad.

Andrew Chan, Myuran Sukumaran and other prisoners facing execution will be put through an "assimilation" process to mentally prepare them for the firing squad, Indonesia's attorney general has revealed.

HM Prasetyo on Friday told reporters Jakarta was waiting for the legal avenues of some of the 10 drug felons awaiting execution to be exhausted before setting a date.

He refused to call it a delay, even if he had earlier planned for the Bali Nine pair to spend as little time as possible on Nusakambangan, the execution island where they've been for more than a week.

"You interpret it as a waiting period, go ahead, but we're respecting the ongoing legal process," Mr Prasetyo said.

When the courts were finished, he said, the prisoners would be executed simultaneously.

He also flagged for the first time a period of "assimilation".

"Assimilation is preparing mentally the death convicts who's about to face execution," he said. "There, they will be accompanied by religious figures until they're truly ready."

Chan and Sukumaran are in isolation cells where they can talk to each other but can't mix with other prisoners besides one Nigerian, also on death row.

Prison authorities say there's been no order to move them out, even though it's clear they will be spending longer on the island than originally intended.

On Friday night, their supporters in Bali were devastated when an auction of Kerobokan prisoner's paintings was ordered to be shut down by Jakarta.

The regular auctions fund supplies for the art classes and other projects launched with the imitative of the Australians.

This time however, prison authorities were unhappy with an unofficial flyer that promoted the auction as a tribute dedicated to Sukumaran.

The 90-plus paintings that were to be auctioned in Kuta were taken back to the prison, with a letter from the prison governor Sudjonggo saying the event was cancelled over concerns of "discrediting the process of ... the implementation of the death penalty".

The organisers say the event was never intended to be political, and they hope to reschedule the auction in order to keep the rehabilitation projects going.

Source: Source: AAP, March 14, 2015 (local time)

How the artwork of Bali Nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran has become darker

Wooden cross used for firing-squad executions in
Indonesia, Myuran Sukumaran, Feb./March 2015

Bali Nine inmate Myuran Sukumaran’s art work has taken a visibly dark turn as his execution looms in Indonesia.

A far cry from the colour-filled portraits and still lifes he created while teaching art to inmates at Kerobokan jail, the art work produced by Mr Sukumaran in the last two months is mournful and often chilling.

A single bullet on a table.

A wooden execution stake still covered in the blood of prisoners who were shot last.

Another is a self portrait, smeared to the point you can no longer recognise Myuran looking back at you.

And a portrait of the only man who has the power to save his life.

His portrait of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, along with other works he completed after the rejection of his clemency plea, will be displayed at an exhibition for prisoner art in Bali on Friday.

There are another 93 paintings produced inside the Balinese jail by prisoners who participated in Mr Sukumaran's art program which will be auctioned off at the the Hard Rock Hotel in Kuta.

But Mr Sukumaran's artworks are not for sale. They could possibly be the last link his family have to the condemned man.

Mr Sukumaran has not been allowed to paint since he was transferred to ‘Death Island’ last Thursday.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Mail Online, March 13, 2015

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The Psychology of the Executioner

Screenshot from "Dead Man Walking" (1995) by Tim Robbins, with Susan
Sarandon and Sean Penn, based on Sr. Helen Prejean's eponymous book.

A look inside the minds of those who have participated in firing squads and lethal injections.

There’s a funny fact about firing squads: People volunteer for them. When it comes to lethal injection though, it can be difficult to find an expert with the right expertise to oversee the procedure. In 2006, Missouri state officials told a judge that they sent letters to 298 anesthesiologists, asking if they would help with the state’s executions. All refused.

In 2010, when Utah wanted to execute death-row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner, it used five anonymous police officers who all volunteered for the job. Two other volunteer police officers stood by, in case anyone in the original five wanted to back out at the last minute. (None of the five officers got cold feet.)

About a week before Gardner’s execution, CNN talked with another officer who had volunteered for the firing squad that executed convicted murderer John Albert Taylor in 1996. The officer considered the job a rare chance to affect “100 percent justice.” “There’s just some people we need to kick off the planet,” he said. He described the process as instantaneous, professional, and not unduly gruesome.

In contrast, getting medical professionals—the equivalent of trained marksmen for lethal injections—to join death penalty teams can be difficult. Doctors, after all, take an oath to “first, do no harm.” Doctors’ groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Board of Anesthesiology, say physicians shouldn’t participate in capital punishment. 

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Source: Pacific Standard, Francie Diep, March 12, 2015

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Alternatives to Lethal Injection Not Seen in Texas

Texas Death Chamber

Despite the fact that Texas is running out of the drug used in executions, alternatives like the firing squad are not on the table for the Lone Star State, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.

Following last night’s execution of gang thug Manuel Vasquez, there is only one dose of pentobarbital remaining in the prison system’s medicine cabinet, and officials say they currently have not found a new source for the drug. Five more executions are scheduled between now and the end of April.

Utah lawmakers have approved a bill allowing the firing squad to be used in that state if lethal injection drugs are not available, but State Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston), the veteran head of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and the most powerful official in the world of crime and punishment in the state, is scratching that, or the gas chamber or electric chair, as other options.

“I would think not, I certainly hope not, there is no discussion about it,” Whitmire told News Radio 1200 WOAI’s Michael Board.

The method of execution being lethal injection is codified in state law, meaning that the Legislature would have to change it. The drugs used by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to execute criminals, and the dosage, is left up to TDCJ.

“I think what we are doing now works,” Whitmire said. “The death penalty is a very serious matter. The legislature supports it. The public supports it.”

Since the first execution was carried out in what is now Texas, the execution of a man for piracy in 1819, hanging was the method used for more than 100 years, until the last convict was hanged in 1923, the firing squad was used four times, all during the Civil War when the state was under a form of martial law. Three of the four men executed by shooting were Confederate Army deserters, the fourth was a rapist.

For that period, executions were also under the authority of county governments.

The Texas Legislature made executions a function of the state government in 1923 and ordered the Electric Chair to be the method of execution. A total of 361 people were executed in Texas by the Electric Chair between 1923 and 1964.

Texas pioneered the use of lethal injection, becoming the first jurisdiction anywhere in the world to use lethal drugs for an execution, starting in 1967. Since capital punishment was authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court following a lapse in the mid 1970s, lethal injection has been the only method used.

Source: WOAI, March 12, 2015

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