US:Prisoners executed by lethal injection in the US may die painfully of suffocation, remaining conscious for up to 18 minutes because the drugs fail to work properly, according to a medical review of dozens of executions.
The study, published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine, found that some inmates received less anaesthetic per pound of body weight than is given to dogs and pigs used in medical experiments.
Since its introduction 25 years ago, 37 US states have adopted lethal injection for executions as a cheaper and more humane alternative to electrocution and the gas chamber. Eleven states have suspended its use, however, following complaints that it is painful and thus in breach of the eighth amendment to the US constitution, which forbids "cruel and unusual punishments".
Most states use three drugs: thiopental, an anaesthetic; pancuronium bromide, which paralyses the muscles and stops breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Each drug is supposed to be capable of killing a prisoner on its own and if one drug fails to work, the thiopental is meant to keep him/her anaesthetised until death.
"Our analysis indicates that as used, thiopental might be insufficient both to maintain a surgical plane of anesthesia and to predictably induce death. Consequently, elimination of pancuronium or both pancuronium and potassium, as has been suggested in California, could result in situations in which inmates ultimately awaken," the report said.
The study found that many executioners administer standard doses of anaesthetic that do not take into account an inmate's weight and other factors. Some inmates got too little and, in some cases, the anaesthetic wore off before the execution was over.
Reviewing 49 executions in North Carolina and California, the researchers found that a few inmates lived 18 minutes or more and needed extra drugs to kill them. "In such cases, death by suffocation would occur in a paralysed inmate fully aware of the progressive suffocation and potassium-induced sensation of burning. This was likely the experience of Florida inmate Angel Diaz, whose eyes were open and mouth was moving 24 minutes into his execution and who was pronounced dead after 34 minutes," the report said.
Florida suspended the use of lethal injection after last December's execution of Diaz, a convicted murderer, was botched because the technicians who inserted the intravenous tube missed his vein.
The American Medical Association, the American Nurses' Association, the Society of Correctional Physicians and a number of state medical boards have banned as unethical any causative role for medical professionals in executions. Consequently, lethal injections are often administered by untrained staff and the report criticised what it described as the inadequate protocols that determine how the procedure should be administered.
"In stark contrast to animal euthanasia, lethal injection for judicial execution was designed and implemented with no clinical or basic research whatsoever. To our knowledge, no ethical or oversight groups have ever evaluated the protocols and outcomes in lethal injection," the report said.
l A convicted murderer who stopped appealing his death sentence but then changed his mind and went to court five days ago was executed in Ohio yesterday after the US supreme court refused to step in.
Officials at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville said James Filiaggi (41) was pronounced dead at 11.23am local time after an injection of lethal chemicals.
In his final words, Filiaggi said goodbye to his family and attacked capital punishment, saying: "The state needs to find out this is not the answer, this is no deterrent to crime. Some are falsely convicted, railroaded. The state needs to wake up.
"Maybe they will follow the Europeans. God is the only one who knows."