From the Alabama article:

"Corbett said that, after the first drug is administered, a member of the security detail assigned to the condemned prisoner will follow the new procedure to assure he is unconscious. Then the execution will continue with the administration of the final two drugs.

"Medical professionals said the procedures being adopted by the state are commonly used to assess consciousness. A person who is conscious will blink when his eyelashes are brushed, and will withdraw his arm when pinched, they said.

"Death penalty opponents said the procedure will do little to ensure the inmate doesn't suffer a horrible death."

"'These additional steps are by no means sufficient to ensure that the inmate will be unconscious,' said Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. The clinic represents Death Row inmates."

Really? Not sufficient? How so? Other than the fact that you just don't want them to be sufficient?



I think I'll go with the medical professionals on this one.

I'm sure they're just pretending to be asleep. You know, playing possum.

[This message was edited by David Newell on 10-26-07 at .]

Isn't the brief moment of pain little to bear considering that these people are minutes away from spending the rest of eternity in far less comfortable circumstances?

Death penalty opponents have worked themselves into a corner of a room called absurdity.

Isn't it next to a Starbucks?

Not only is the mantra of many capital defendants when it comes to the punishment phase, now it is the mantra of the innocence project. The latest blamee, The Texas AG's office.

All I know is, I'll be voting for Attorney General Abbott for anything he runs for. I'm glad our AG follows the law and I'm glad his assistants went out of their way to call Dow to make sure nothing else was coming.

I'm glad the computers and the ethics are working at our AG's office. The AG's office was not required to make the call to Dow's office, it is obvious they did that out of an outstanding ethical standard held by themselves and their boss.

One quote from the article stuck out as being ironic, having watched the "innocence project" in action before, and having listened to their absurd arguments in the past:

"They were being quite aggressively confrontational," Dow said.

That is the pot calling the kettle black, indeed.


Richard lawyer says Texas AG's office pushed for execution

HOUSTON � An attorney for the only man put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court announced plans to review the constitutionality of lethal injection said staff at the Texas Attorney General's Office pushed for the execution.

Michael Richard, 49, was executed Sept. 25 hours after justices decided take up a challenge from two condemned inmates in Kentucky over the same lethal injection procedures used by Texas. Richard's death also followed a refusal by Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, to keep the office open past 5 p.m. so his attorneys could file an appeal.

Richard's attorneys wanted his execution halted until the Kentucky issue was settled.

David Dow, one of Richard's attorneys, said a lawyer on his staff informed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office about the failed attempt with the criminal appeals court about 6 p.m. But an assistant attorney general from Abbott's office told lawyers they had six minutes to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court for Richard.

"They were being quite aggressively confrontational," Dow said.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Jerry Strickland said aides acted appropriately. Assistant Attorney General Baxter Morgan contacted Dow's office at 6 p.m. because no appeals were pending. Dow told them one would be filed with the Supreme Court, Strickland said.

Richard's execution wasn't carried out until the appeal before the Supreme Court was rejected. His lethal injection also was delayed until the attorney general's office told the prison system no more appeals were pending, said Michelle Lyons, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman.

However, Dow said it remains unclear if the Supreme Court failed to halt Richard's execution because of the case's merits or because the Court of Criminal Appeals had not ruled on the motion first.

Former Gov. Mark White, who was once the state's attorney general, and former Attorney General Jim Mattox have criticized Abbott for not stopping the execution after Keller closed the clerk's office.

"That court of criminal appeals, that attorney general and that governor failed to halt one of the most egregious breaches of equity in the courts that I've ever known," White said.

Abbott responded this week by defending his role in the Richard execution.

"It's up to the courts to make that determination. I don't have the legal authority to stop an execution. Only the governor and only the courts have that authority and we have to rely upon the courts to exercise that authority," he said.

Gov. Rick Perry, who could have issued a 30-day reprieve, has said through a spokesman that such cases are for the courts to resolve but that he believes lethal injections are proper.

quote:

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Originally posted by David Newell:
Isn't it next to a Starbucks?

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Yes, in the wing of the building next to Denial of Reality.

quote:

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Originally posted by WHM:
Isn't the brief moment of pain little to bear considering that these people are minutes away from spending the rest of eternity in far less comfortable circumstances?

---

They don't think they are going to hell. All I can hope is that the horror these killers put their victims and the family/friends of the victim through is slowly revisited upon them for all eternity down under. And I don't mean Australia.

Having personally observed an execution three years ago, of the man who brutally murdered then Fort Bend County ADA Gil Epstein, I can say that if there was any physical suffering by his killer, and there certainly didn't appear to be, it was Infinitesimal compared to the horror, fear and pain felt by my good friend Gil suffered as he was shot point blank in the face on September 18, 1996.

If there was any mental suffering, then too bad. You reap what you sow.

I say again to the anti-dp crowd...Where was the justice in Gil's murder, and why aren't you crying for him, instead of crying for his killer and attempting to immortalize his killer on the various anti-dp websites?

I'll also say again, we can say with certainty that the man who killed Gil Epstein will never kill again.

"Lethal Injection Ban Leads To Rise
In Back-Alley Lethal Injections"

(Sorry I scooped you, Shannon!)

SCOTUSblog has this on a recent order denying a stay based upon Baze:

An Attempt to Avoid Confusion in Death Penalty Stay Orders

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 3:12 pm

This post by Lyle links to this Order of the Court denying Earl Berry's petition for certiorari and application for a stay of a decision of the Mississippi Supreme Court. I thought it was worth pausing on this sentence in the Court's Order: "The judgment of the Mississippi Supreme Court relies upon an adequate and independent state ground that deprives the Court of jurisdiction.";

It is quite unusual for the Court to explain its denial of a stay. The logical explanation is that the Justices, recognizing that they will be receiving a large number of Baze-related stay applications, want to avoid the confusion (for both litigants and lower courts) that might otherwise arise from Orders granting some and denying others without comment.

Could that adequate and independent ground be failure to preserve (AKA late claim for delay only)?

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Sparks:
"Lethal Injection Ban Leads To Rise In Back-Alley Lethal Injections"

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This is only half funny becuase a death penalty ban could possibly lead to a rise in revenge killings.

Stay granted pending ruling of cert application.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/court-delays-mississippi-execution-2/

I'm sure the anti-death-penalty mafia will be unbearable now.

I do think, however, that the dissents signal that there are not 5 votes to reverse the decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court, finding the use of lethal injection constitutional. So, the anti-death penalty crowd has a limited period of time to push their agenda.

Stay of Execution Is Granted For Mississippi Murderer

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 31, 2007; Page A03

The Supreme Court issued an eleventh-hour stay for a Mississippi murderer scheduled to be put to death last night, the third execution the justices have blocked since agreeing to decide whether lethal injections violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The reprieve came less than an hour before Earl Wesley Berry was to be put to death for the kidnapping and murder of Mary Bounds in rural Mississippi in 1987.

The Mississippi Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit had both said Berry had raised too late his claim that Mississippi's execution procedures violate the Eighth Amendment.

And the 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans, seemed to set up the issue clearly for the justices, saying that its precedent for denying such applications "remains binding until the Supreme Court provides contrary guidance."

But the court's short order made clear such guidance will come only on a case-by-case basis. The justices gave no reason for granting the stay, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have allowed the execution to go forward.

Still, Elisabeth Semel, a professor at the Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California and director of its Death Penalty Clinic, said she found it significant that only two justices dissented from the court's decision to grant the stay.

At least five justices must agree to a stay for it to take effect.

Even without a moratorium, the pace of executions in the United States has slowed considerably this year. So far, there have been 42 executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, as opposed to 53 last year. The center said only two more are scheduled before the end of the year, and those are in doubt because of the court's action.

A growing number of states have called a halt to lethal injections because of charges that the three chemicals used may not properly protect inmates from pain during the execution. That is the issue justices will consider next year in the case they took in September from Kentucky, Baze v. Rees.

The justices refused to stop the execution of a Texas inmate that took place on the night they announced they had taken the case. But since then, they have granted a stay for a Texas death row inmate, as well as halting the execution of Virginia's Christopher Scott Emmett. They also declined to dissolve a stay that had been issued for an Arkansas inmate by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.


In that case, Scalia said he did not view the court's decision to take the Kentucky case to mean that there would be a "stay of every execution in which an individual raises an Eighth Amendment challenge to the lethal injection protocol."

Someone has posted what they claim is the Mississippi order which found Berry's claim to be procedurally barred as a subsequent writ.

http://www.oranous.com/florida/MarkSchwab/resetexecBerry.htm

The Mississippi Supreme Court thus effectively closed their doors to Berry three years ago. That's a good way to avoid the tactic of last minute chaos.

Did they close the door TO him or ON him?

I think they effectively slammed it on him.

Those door slammers! That's rude.