Legal News

Single-injection execution success in Ohio not as easily transferable to California

By Richard Binder

California has put the death penalty on hold as it reviews its three-drug procedure, hoping to address claims that it inflicts "cruel and unusual punishment." The first drug is supposed to render the prisoner unconscious, the second induces paralysis and the third ultimately causes cardiac arrest. Analysts have contended that some of the 11 inmates put to death since the 1990s were conscious when the painful fatal dose was administered.

In Ohio yesterday Kenneth Biros, who killed and dismembered a woman in 1991, died nine minutes after being injected with a single massive dose of sodium thiopental, a powerful barbiturate that puts its subjects into a sleep so deep they stop breathing. Ohio prisons director Terry Collins described the execution as problem-free.

One would think, therefore, that a reportedly more humane method of lethal injection would solve the constitutional crisis surrounding the death penalty in California. According to experts, however, this is not the case.

For one thing, says the LA Times, California couldn't switch methods so quickly. The state's Administrative Procedures Act requires authorities to seek public comment on any change in official practices. For another, Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, says that it still does nothing to address the problem executioners often encounter in finding a vein capable of holding the catheter through which the lethal drug or drugs are delivered.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on December 09, 2009 (boomark / email).