How does the condemned end

What's more, he was supplying drugs to the Arizona Department of Corrections that had already been used in at least one execution. Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's ballsy director and an attorney who had spent years working capital murder cases in Louisiana, didn't mince words in a letter to Alavi.

According to Maya Foa, strategic director of Reprieve's death-penalty team, death-penalty drugs were now being obtained through a complex supply chain and network of global distribution.

This marked the start of a deliberate and very effective campaign on the part of human-rights groups and defence attorneys to thwart the supply of those overseas drugs, through both media campaigns and lawsuits. When it became public knowledge in the spring of , the company's managing director, Naveen Verma, claimed he had no idea what the drugs were being used for, adding that a broker negotiated the contract and had since been sacked.

Somewhat ironically, India retains capital punishment for certain serious offences, though it has only been carried out four times in the past 20 years. McCracken says this was when some US states began changing the drug protocol they used to carry out lethal injections.

When stocks of sodium thiopental dried up, Ohio, for example, changed to a single dose of pentobarbital. Pentobarbital works much like sodium -thiopental. In our brain we have what are called GABA receptors - chemical messengers that scientists believe control our fear or anxiety when our neurons are overexcited. Pentobarbital and sodium thiopental stimulate those receptors and a certain amount can put you to sleep.

According to one anaesthetist who has researched the lethal injection process, pentobarbital kills people in two different ways: an older, sicker person's veins will dilate and their heart will beat faster, which can cause a heart attack. Younger people whose heart can tolerate the drug stop breathing. And if you stop breathing for five minutes you get brain damage and then hypoxemia - a lack of oxygen in the bloodstream, which will ultimately kill you.

Lundbeck, a Danish pharmaceutical company, held the only licence to manufacture pentobarbital, known by its trade name Nembutal in the United States, and by July , caving to pressure from human-rights groups, it agreed to halt distribution of the product to prisons in any state that carried out the lethal injection. Departments of corrections were unable to get their hands on sedatives used in the lethal injection process and the stocks that some of them did have expired in November of the same year.

To illustrate just how shady the entire thing had become, one death-penalty attorney shared a redacted email chain with me which showed a foreign supplier of pentobarbital willing to ship to the US using "diplomatic seals", which it said "will enable the parcel to pass free from all customs control and police intervention". The same email claimed it wrapped merchandise in carbon photo paper so that x-ray machines would not penetrate it.

In the spring of , a federal judge in Washington, DC ruled that the US Food and Drug Administration FDA had broken the law in allowing certain states to bypass regulations and import unapproved drugs to be used in -executions. How utterly disappointing. It was like a tactical game, with events seeming to favour the abolitionist movement. It was the execution states' move. This is where the story takes a more -sinister turn; where it's no longer a game of cat and mouse with suppliers and their adversaries.

This is the moment the war over death-penalty drugs reaches the executioner's table. The source of drugs became shrouded in secrecy. In September , it looked like death-row prisoner Arturo Diaz would become the first person to be put to death using pentobarbital obtained from a vendor that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice refused to identify. Then, a week before the execution it revealed it had obtained the drug from the Virginia Department of Corrections - at no cost.

In October , stymied by human rights groups and defence lawyers working for the condemned, Florida decided to try something new - a never-before-tried drug in executions called midazolam, which is used by doctors to treat seizures and insomnia, and for sedating patients before medical procedures. Florida planned to use it first in its three-drug cocktail, followed by pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. When it put convicted rapist and murderer William Happ to death in October last year, witnesses described how Happ shook his head back and forth while the drugs flooded his system.

Two minutes later he opened his eyes, then yawned before his jaw dropped open. Lawyers for seven Florida death row inmates subsequently challenged the constitutionality of the drug.

Some states also turned to what are known as "compounding pharmacies" to obtain supplies. Unregulated by the FDA, compounding pharmacies primarily mix drugs for individual patients' needs - removing an ingredient that causes an allergic reaction, perhaps, or changing the form of the medicine from a pill to a liquid.

In October , South Dakota executed Eric Robert - convicted of killing a prison guard - using pentobarbital it obtained from a compounding pharmacy.

Following that, Georgia, Texas, Ohio and Missouri each announced they would secure pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies. But critics said compounded pentobarbital wasn't regulated by the FDA, had much shorter expiration dates and if its potency was questionable it wouldn't sedate the inmate properly. Herbert Smulls, an inmate on Missouri's death row, was scheduled to die on 29 January using compounded pentobarbital. In a letter sent a week before to the FDA, Smulls' attorney, Cheryl Pilate, described information she had received that she said proved a compounding pharmacy sent the prison syringes filled with pentobarbital and had directed the Missouri Department of Corrections to store it at room temperature.

An affidavit from a pharmacologist said improper storage of the pentobarbital at room temperature created a risk that Smulls could be "injected with a degraded, contaminated drug, thus causing excruciating pain". If you're given a large enough dose of pentobarbital prepared under FDA supervision, most anaesthetists agree that you'll fall asleep and won't wake up, and although nobody knows exactly how it feels to be killed with pentobarbital, most agree it's probably painless.

But compounded drugs might not be sterile. And because of the Hippocratic oath, medical doctors don't administer it to death-row inmates; it's injected by people who work in the prison.

As one anaesthetist I spoke to told me, "They don't know what they're doing. And so the pentobarbital can burn or cause pain on injection. And sometimes [inmates] are not given enough. In a batch of contaminated steroids from a compounding pharmacy caused people to fall sick with fungal meningitis.

Sixty-four people died in that outbreak. Late on 28 January, the supreme court granted Smulls a stay of execution, but it was lifted the next day and Smulls was put to death using the compounded drug.

By now, some states had begun talking about bringing back earlier methods of execution: Chris Koster, Missouri's attorney general, suggested it might revert to the gas chamber; Dustin McDaniel, the attorney general of Arkansas, hinted at a return to the electric chair. And in Wyoming, Republican state senator Bruce Burns even suggested firing squad as an alternative.

The horror of what happened in Ohio on 16 January was palpable. Nobody could sugar-coat what they had seen: not the witnesses sitting in front of the glass screen; not the corrections officers standing guard; nor the prison warden whose job it was to stand next to the condemned man, Dennis McGuire.

Rather than source compounded pentobarbital from a US pharmacy, Ohio tried a new drug protocol on McGuire, convicted of the rape and murder of a pregnant woman in The cocktail would consist of the sedative midazolam and hydromorphone.

But the combination was untested. Before the execution, David Waisel, associate professor of anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School who served as an expert witness for McGuire in his appeal, warned it could cause the condemned man "agony and horror", but Ohio went ahead regardless. Witnesses said it took McGuire 26 minutes to die - the longest by lethal injection in the state's history.

I watched him repeatedly clench his fists. It appeared to me he was -fighting for his life but suffocating. The agony and terror David Waisel told me that McGuire was never sufficiently anaesthetised. In more than a decade covering the death penalty in Texas, I'd interviewed scores of inmates at the Polunsky Unit, the concrete fortress in the east Texas town of Livingston that houses the state's death row wing.

But I'd never witnessed an execution. Several years ago, the criminal justice department's then-public information officer asked if I'd like to, but I didn't feel it would add anything to the stories I was writing. With new drugs being tried, others obtained from questionable sources, and horrific stories of suffering on the gurney, I felt I needed to see what 35 states were doing in the name of the American people. The next person scheduled for execution in the US was Kenneth Hogan who was set to die by a cocktail of pentobarbital, the muscle relaxant vecuronium bromide, and potassium chloride on 23 January.

Two weeks earlier, pentobarbital from the same batch, sourced from a compounding pharmacy, had been used to kill Michael Lee Wilson, who said he felt his entire body burning. Hogan had been convicted of stabbing his friend to death in One morning that January he told his wife he was going to work, but instead went to see year-old Lisa Stanley while her husband was out. The pair smoked marijuana and Hogan claimed Stanley tried to persuade him to steal a stereo system for her.

When he refused, they began to argue. According to court documents from Hogan's clemency appeal, she threatened to call his wife and tell her the couple were having an affair.

The row escalated. Hogan is quoted as saying "she went into the kitchen and she come [sic] back out I was putting my coat on and she just pushed it [a knife] right at me. I didn't know what to say, do or think, I just grabbed the knife and it hurt, it hurt He then describes killing Stanley with the same knife.

The state explored nitrogen gas as a lethal injection alternative but encountered supply issues. In February , former Attorney General Mike Hunter announced that the state had secured a reliable supply of lethal injection drugs and was prepared to resume executions. On Aug. However, Friot in his ruling rejected the claims of six death prisoners who did not provide an alternative execution method, clearing the way for the state to set execution dates.

A seventh death row prisoner, Bigler Stouffer, never joined the lawsuit. Among them is Julius Jones, who faces a Nov. Kevin Stitt does not intervene. Keaton Ross is a Report for America corps member who covers prison conditions and criminal justice issues for Oklahoma Watch.

Contact him at or Kross Oklahomawatch. Republish This Story. Please follow these terms for republication:. Every day we strive to produce journalism that matters — stories that strengthen accountability and transparency, provide value and resonate with readers like you. This work is essential to a better-informed community and a healthy democracy. Support our publication Every day we strive to produce journalism that matters — stories that strengthen accountability and transparency, provide value and resonate with readers like you.

Donate now. It is time we break the cycle of violence. The death penalty is permissible under international and regional human rights law as an exception to the right to life, although most of these instruments impose limitations on its operation. While the death penalty is permissible under international and regional human rights law, there is a worldwide trend towards abolition, with the number of states retaining and using the penalty decreasing year by year.

Figures from Amnesty International in reveal that 97 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, 8 countries have abolished it for ordinary crimes and 35 countries are abolitionist in practice; 58 countries still retain and use the death penalty Amnesty International, It is important to note, though, that while a state may be classed as abolitionist because it has not executed anyone for 10 years in most of these countries, the death penalty machinery continues to exist, which means that people can still be sentenced to death and kept on death row in restricted conditions, which in turn affects their families adversely.

In a number of retentionist countries, the operation of the death penalty is shrouded in secrecy, going against international standards which require that information about capital punishment be made public.

Some countries also refuse to provide basic information about the death sentence to family members of the condemned. States such as Belarus, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan only notify the prisoners of their impending execution a few hours before, and do not inform family members or legal representatives until after the execution Amnesty International, n.

When the death penalty was in operation in Uzbekistan, relatives of the condemned were not informed of the date when their loved one was executed, nor was the place of internment revealed as this was considered a state secret. To this day, some family members still cannot visit the graves of their loved ones as the details have not been released Mothers against the Death Penalty and Torture and the Office for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, Practices such as these deny family members the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones, adding to the pain of having their relative executed.

This shows a total absence of compassion for the feelings of the families of the condemned. Refusing to provide convicted persons and family members advance notice of the date and time of execution is a clear human rights violation.

In the most extreme instances, prisoners have learned of their impending executions only moments before dying, and families have been informed only later, sometimes by coincidence rather than design.

These practices are inhuman and degrading and undermine the procedural safeguards surrounding the right to life. In Taiwan, the justification for secrecy is to prevent any likelihood of demonstrations outside the prison. What is clear, though, is that the pain suffered by the family of the executed person is exacerbated by the lack of information about their final moments.

The length of time spent on death row varies from country to country. In the Commonwealth Caribbean, the condemned have their sentences commuted if they spend more than five years on death row after sentence, 9 whereas in China, executions frequently occur within months of their sentence.

Moreover, in many countries, prisoners on death row are separated from the general prison population and are subjected to more stringent conditions, particularly regarding their movement within the prison and contact with the outside world. In the USA, death row conditions vary considerably from state to state, but there are some commonalities. Most death row inmates are housed in maximum security units, although where there are only a few people on death row, they may be integrated with other inmates in the general prison population.

Most death row prisoners are kept in single cells with little or no contact with other inmates. Many spend up to 23 hours a day in their cells with few facilities. In Arizona, for example, all condemned prisoners are held in single cells which are equipped with a toilet, sink, bed and mattress.

They are not allowed contact with any other inmates, and out-of- cell time is limited to outdoor exercise in a secured area two hours a day, three times a week and a shower three times a week. Inmates are not permitted to have meals with other people — their food is served to them in their cells Arizona Department of Corrections, n. Similar arrangements are in place in other death penalty states. Most death row prisoners do have access to television and other entertainment books, magazines.