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To U.S. Death Row Inmates, Today's Election is a Matter of Life or Death

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You don't have to tell Daniel Troya and the 40 other denizens of federal death row locked in shed-sized solitary cells for 23 hours a day, every day, that elections have consequences. To them, from inside the U.S. government's only death row located in Terre Haute, Indiana, Tuesday's election is quite literally a matter of life and death: If Kamala Harris wins, they live; if Donald Trump wins, they die. "He's gonna kill everyone here that he can," Troya, 41, said in an email from behind bars. "That's as easy to predict as the sun rising."
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Judge allows Georgia execution to go forward

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A Fulton County judge rejected the challenge of a death row inmate today who raised concerns about Georgia's switch to a new lethal injection drug.

Superior Court Judge Wendy Shoob denied a motion to halt the execution of Roy Willard Blankenship, who is set to be executed Thursday for the 1978 murder of an elderly Savannah woman.

The complaint centered on Georgia's decision to swap the sedative sodium thiopental for pentobarbital as part of its 3-drug execution combination.

Shoob said Blankenship cannot meet the legal burden proving that use of the drug violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. And she noted that the drug was found constitutional by every other court to address the issue.

Blankenship's execution would be the 1st in Georgia using pentobarbital.

At a daylong hearing on Tuesday, defense attorney Brian Kammer argued that the use of pentobarbital to carry out executions would risk needless pain and suffering for Blankenship, thus violating the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. He noted that even Lundbeck Inc., pentobarbital's Danish manufacturer, has warned that using the drug to carry out the death penalty "falls outside its approved indications."

"Pentobarbital is a totally untested drug with respect to use on human patients," Kammer said, adding: "It's nothing more than experimenting on a human being."

State attorneys said the claims were unfounded, noting that the drug has been used in more than a dozen executions by states which had switched from sodium thiopental amid a supply shortage. And each time, said Georgia attorney Joseph Drolet, state and federal courts have allowed the drug to be used in lethal injections.

Blankenship has few remaining legal options left. He can appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court and federal courts, but Georgia's pardons board has already rejected his bid for clemency.

Source: Savannah Morning News, June 22, 2011
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