World Day Against the Death Penalty: Top five botched executions this year

Lethal injections are experimental and frequently botched - leading to an agonisingly painful death for prisoners. Reprieve is today calling on healthcare professionals to help us debunk the myth that this method is 'humane'.

Read our top five botched executions of the past 12 months. Help us stop them.

First, here's how it works: after an anaesthetic is injected to put the prisoner to sleep, a paralysing agent immobilises him until a massive overdose of potassium chloride stops his heart. If the first drug fails - often the dose is too low or the IV is not inserted properly - the prisoner remains awake but paralysed. The pain is excruciating - like "fire burning in the veins" - but the prisoner is frozen in silence, unable to move or cry out. This is a botched execution. The prisoner slowly suffocates in agony until the potassium chloride finally shocks the heart so severely it stops beating.

Now here's the top five botched executions of the past year:

1) BRANDON RHODE

September 27, 2010: Brandon Rhode is executed in Georgia. His eyes remain wide open. Doubts are raised over the way sodium thiopental was administered.

Dr Mark Heath declares in an affidavit: “If the thiopental was inadequately effective Mr. Rhode’s death would certainly have been agonizing,” he declared. “There is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonizing in the absence of adequate anesthesia.”

2) JEFFREY LANDRIGAN

October 10, 2010: It takes several minutes for Jeffrey Landrigan to die. He is executed with sodium thiopental sold by the fly-by-night British drug company Dream Pharma. It appeared the anaesthetic may not have worked. It took over 10 minutes for him to be pronounced dead.

3) EMANUEL HAMMOND

January 27, 2011: Emanuel Hammond is executed. Hammond closes his eyes, and then re-opens them later. Three witnesses expressed concern. Professor Sheri Johnson, who watched particularly intently because she knew there were doubts over the British thiopental’s efficacy, said “he closed his eyes perhaps ten seconds after the drugs started. But then, some time later, he opened them again”. Professor Johnson added that this was quite unlike three thiopental executions she had seen before, when the prisoners closed their eyes very quickly and remained “totally still”, apparently in a coma. Josh Green, a reporter with the Gwinnett Daily Post, confirms that Hammond first closed, and then re-opened his eyes some time after receiving the thiopental, while Jill Rand, a Florida nurse who became Hammond’s pen friend, said she saw him move his lips.

4) EDDIE DUVAL POWELL

June 15 2011: Eddie Duval Powell is executed by lethal injection in Alabama. Powell closes his eyes. He then opens them again later. Seemingly confused and startled, he jerked his head to one side and began breathing heavily, his chest rose and contracted.

5) ROY BLANKENSHIP

June 23, 2011: Roy Willard Blankenship is put to sleep by sodium thiopental, but dies with his eyes wide open. In a sworn affidavit, Dr David Waisel, an Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, states: “…I can say with certainty that Mr. [Roy] Blankenship was inadequately anesthetized and was conscious for approximately the first three minutes of the execution and that he suffered greatly."

To learn how healthcare professionals can help stop execution by lethal injection please contact Maya Foa.

Dr David Nicholl, a British neurologist who has taken legal action against the use of the sedative pentobarbital, said: "The medical profession has already been quite explicit that pentobarbital has no role in executions. The use of this drug – which should only be used in an intensive care-type setting with full anaesthetic support – is nothing short of barbaric, and has resulted in botched executions. ”

Tineke Harris, Legal Director at Reprieve, said: “The idea that there is somehow a ‘humane’ way of executing people is one of the most dangerous myths surrounding the death penalty. Despite its quasi-medical appearance, the lethal injection procedure used in the US carries a high risk of causing serious pain and suffering to the prisoner. If the anaesthetic fails – as seems to happen far too often – the person being executed will remain conscious, but paralysed, as the final, excruciatingly painful injection is administered. Doctors, nurses and all other healthcare professionals must take a stand against the sham medical procedure that is lethal injection. We have seen before how much weight their words and action can carry – with their help, we can put a stop to it.”

Source: Reprieve, Emmanuelle Purdon, October 10, 2011

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