Condemned killer questions state’s lethal injection method
The lawyer for Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, 54, will argue before the state Supreme Court on Wednesday. He said the case over the steps taken to execute inmates — called the death penalty protocol — shows just how rigid the state is in its handling of capital cases. Corrections officials counter that the steps are reviewed annually.
“There’s no rational basis for proceeding with this protocol,” said lawyer Bradley MacLean. “There can be a simpler, faster and cheaper method. It makes no sense.”
Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. His spokeswoman said it’s a matter of upholding the current law.
A central issue the court will consider is the cocktail of drugs injected into inmates to execute them. The current protocol includes three drugs.
The first, sodium pentathol, acts as an anesthetic to put the inmate to sleep. The second, pancuronium bromide, or Pavulon, paralyzes the muscle system and the third, potassium chloride, stops the victim’s heart. The final two drugs are administered in dosages considered lethal.
Pavulon is not allowed by the American Veterinary Medical Association for euthanasia of animals, and opponents say it can cause extreme suffering that isn’t visible because of the drug’s paralyzing effect. MacLean said Abdur’Rahman asked him why it’s used.
“Basically he said, ‘You mean they’re going to execute me with something they wouldn’t use on a dog?'” MacLean said. “There’s just the stigma attached with using a chemical that’s strictly prohibited for potbellied pigs.”
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said state officials should validate their methods of executions to head off more problems.
“States should just review it themselves and review it with experts,” he said. “There’s no point in talking with anti-death penalty groups, they just want to throw sand into the gears.”
Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman Amanda Sluss said the protocol has been regularly checked since its inception in 1998.
“The warden reviews it annually,” she said. “But there has been no major update.”
The state has put an inmate to death with lethal injection only once. That 2000 execution has been the only one in Tennessee in 45 years.
Scheidegger said the drug cocktails have only recently become controversial because lethal injection was the preferred death penalty method when anti-death penalty groups rallied against the electric chair and the gas chamber in past decades.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stopped a Missouri execution after a last-minute appeal regarding a similar lethal chemical cocktail. But the court lifted the stay 5-4, and the inmate was put to death a few hours later.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never found a specific form of execution to be unconstitutional, and lethal injection is used in 37 states because it is considered more humane than options like the electric chair or gas chamber.
Correction departments across the country counter there is no evidence that the drugs, including Pavulon, don’t work to produce a relatively painless death.
Abdur’Rahman, known as James Lee Jones at the time, was sentenced to die for the 1986 stabbing death of Nashville drug dealer Patrick Daniels. He had been convicted previously of assault and sentenced to federal prison, where he killed an inmate he said had repeatedly raped him.
Abdur’Rahman already has a favorable ruling in his case from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would allow him to present claims he was the victim of a dishonest prosecutor. But that case is on appeal to U.S. Supreme Court. MacLean believes a hearing on those claims could happen as early as this year.
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On the Net:
Tennessee Supreme Court, http://www.tsc.state.tn.us/