Kazakhstan towards definitive abolition

March 28, 2011: Kazakhstan took another step towards the abolition of the death penalty. The Presidential Commission for Human Rights in Astana asked the government to abolish capital punishment, press agency Interfax reported.

Commission head Tastemir Abishev, in announcing the request for abolition, reminded that Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaiev imposed an unlimited moratorium on the death penalty from 2003 onwards and that Astana is an active member of the International Commission for the Abolition of the Death Penalty.

Since 2007, after a constititional modification, the death penalty in Kazakistan is only allowed for those who commit terrorist attacks that cause death and for serious war crimes.

Source: TMNews, March 28, 2011

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Hamas court orders execution of 'collaborator'

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — A Gaza military court has condemned a man to death and sentenced another to forced labour for collaborating with Israel, the Hamas interior ministry said on Wednesday.

"The permanent tribunal on Tuesday sentenced the accused to death by hanging for treason and complicity with murder," the ministry said in a statement which identified the condemned man only as a resident of the central Gaza Strip.

The second man was sentenced to 15 years of forced labour, the statement said, adding that both judgements were subject to appeal.

In April, Gaza's Hamas rulers executed two alleged "collaborators" in the first executions to be carried out since the Islamist movement seized power in June 2007.

It was also the first time executions had been carried out in the coastal enclave for five years.

Palestinian law defines collaboration with Israel, murder and drug trafficking as capital crimes.

It says the president must approve all execution orders before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognises the legitimacy of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose four-year term ended in 2009.

Israeli security forces routinely use Palestinian informers to thwart militant attacks and assist in the assassinations of top militants.

Source: AFP, March 31, 2011

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Texas caught illegally dispensing lethal injection drugs under the name of a hospital that closed 30 years ago

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has today been reported to the US Attorney General Eric Holder for illegally purchasing and dispensing lethal injection drugs under the name of a hospital that closed in 1983.

In a letter to Holder and to the Texas Department of Safety, lawyers for death row prisoner Cleve Foster describe how the state's prison agency has been purchasing controlled substances – including drugs used for lethal injections – under a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration certificate assigned to Huntsville Unit Hospital, which has not existed for 30 years. "[A]s a result, we believe that TDCJ is unlawfully in possession of and unlawfully dispensing controlled substances," the lawyers write.

Under US drug laws, DEA registration numbers must be renewed every three years. Yet Foster's legal team, Maurie Levin and Sandra Babcock, have discovered that the TDCJ “has failed to advise the DEA for the past twenty-eight years of the fact that the Huntsville Unit Hospital no longer exists," or to admit that what actually exists at that location is a prison unit with a warden "purchasing and dispensing controlled substances".

The lawyers further report that Texas’s drugs are not kept at a pharmacy or by a DEA-registered handler: "At no point is an appropriately licensed or authorized practitioner involved in the dispensing process, and at no point is a prescription written to transfer the controlled substances to a member of the execution team”.

Levin and Babcock have asked Attorney General Holder to direct the DEA to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation, noting "the potential for abuse is rampant." If violations are found, they request the immediate revocation of agency registration and seizure of the ill-obtained drugs. Any such action would disrupt Texas’s busy execution schedule; seven executions are slated for August, with Cleve Foster due to die on April 5.

Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith said:

“Every day, the US capital punishment system looks more ridiculous. If the Texas Department of Criminal Justice can’t even manage to obey the law, why on earth should they be granted the extraordinary power to kill prisoners?”

For more information please contact Katherine O’Shea at Reprieve’s Press Office katherine.oshea@reprieve.org.uk / 020 7427 1099 / 07931592674.

Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 27 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.

Reprieve has represented, and continues to represent, a large number of prisoners who have been rendered and abused around the world, and is conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of ‘ghost prisoners’ in the so-called ‘war on terror.’

Source: Reprieve, March 31, 2011

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Death Penalty Opponents Assail Troy Davis Ruling

Troy Davis

Anti-death penalty activists criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reject without comment death row inmate Troy Davis’ appeals seeking to delay his execution while he attempts to prove he was wrongfully convicted of killing a white police officer in 1991.

Without another appeal, commutation or pardon, Monday’s decision likely will allow the state of Georgia to set another execution date for Davis. There may be a slight delay in scheduling because of questions over the state’s supply of a key lethal injection drug.

Federal regulators seized the entire stockpile of sodium thiopental earlier this month after questions arose about the way the state obtained the drug.

“We are deeply shocked and disappointed because we think that [Davis] has made a compelling case of innocence and that there are too many questions to go forward with his execution,” Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah, Georgia police officer, largely on the basis of eyewitness testimony, but 7 of the 9 witnesses who implicated Davis have since recanted, and other witnesses have come forward to say another man confessed to killing MacPhail. Further, there has been no physical evidence linking Davis, who had no prior criminal record, to the killing.

Restrictions on federal appeals prevented Davis from having a hearing in federal court on the reliability of the witness testimony used against him. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles also rejected Davis’ application for clemency. An appellate court stayed Davis’ execution date so that his lawyers could file the appeals to the Supreme Court.

Davis was granted a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court 2 hours before he was to be put to death in 2008, and the court in 2009 ordered the federal District Court to take another look at the case.

After holding a hearing to review evidence, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that Davis "failed to show actual innocence" in the case. The District Court suggested that, for procedural reasons, Davis should take his appeal of its ruling directly to the Supreme Court.

In January, Davis’ lawyers filed two pleas. One sought review of the Georgia federal judge's rejection of the innocence claim, and the other asked for a test of the 11th Circuit's refusal to review the case.

"Nobody walking out of that hearing could view this as an open-and-shut case," Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, told WSAV-TV after Monday’s Supreme Court ruling.

"The testimony that came to light demonstrates that doubt still exists, but the legal bar for proving innocence was set so high it was virtually insurmountable," said Cox. “It would be utterly unconscionable to proceed with this execution, plain and simple."

“I think the position of the state has been the burden of proof is on the defense since there’s been a determination in the process,” Rust-Tierney said. “But when all the legalese is pushed aside, the question is is there enough confidence in this conviction to go forward with an execution?”

Davis' sister told CNN Monday that she was "very disappointed" by the Supreme Court's rejection.

Martina Correia-Davis said Davis' attorney told her they would continue to pursue all possible legal options, including a possible repetition of the Georgia State Board of Parole.

MacPhail’s son, Mark MacPhail, Jr. told WSAV-TV in Savannah that the High Court’s ruling proved what the evidence has always shown and what his family has known all along: that "Troy Davis is guilty."

MacPhail, Jr., who was just a few months old when his father was slain, told the television station he had been getting somewhat frustrated and nervous and "wondering what was taking so long."

But Davis’ case has received broad support from entertainment, social and political figures, including former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. There also have been calls for the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to commute Davis’ sentence.

It is unclear what Davis’ lawyers' options are, but defense attorney Jason Ewart told The Associated Press the likeliest route is appealing to the pardons and parole board, a five-member board that rarely postpones executions.

"The Troy Davis case is emblematic of everything that is wrong with capital punishment," Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign, told WSAV. "In a system rife with error, mistakes can be made.

“There are no do-overs when it comes to death," said Moye. “Lawmakers across the country should scrutinize this case carefully, not only because of its unprecedented nature, but because it clearly indicates the need to abolish the death penalty in the United States."

Source: BlackAmericaWeb.com, March 30, 2011

Why the war to save Troy Davis isn't over

On March 28, 2011 I woke up elated about my 10 year anniversary as a cancer survivor. I looked outside and it was cold and gloomy, the sun was nowhere to be found. It's about 9:30 a.m. and the phone rings, it's my brother Troy Davis' lawyer and from the tone in his voice I knew, it was not good news.

My heart sank to a heavy place as I listened to his monotone voice saying, "We just received news that the United States Supreme Court has denied Troy's appeal." Knowing that the appeals for Troy have always been an uphill battle and the lawyers have always stated that from a legal standpoint. Yet today I also heard optimism in the statement, "We will seek and exhaust all legal means available to us." I know from a legal standpoint denial by the Supreme Court is nothing a lawyer finds optimism in, yet I felt the readiness for yet another battle.

My first concern was my mother and my brother Troy. I cannot imagine facing three execution dates and the possibility of a fourth. I knew Troy would be more concerned about our family than himself, but I also knew that as much faith and spirituality as my mother has, she is still a mother and we are fighting for my brother's very existence. In this fight Troy is no longer voiceless and my family is no longer invisible, yet the court still refuses to hear what we have to say. Innocence does matter and beyond a reasonable doubt should be of utmost.

One thing for certain is that the global concern about this case is growing and yet the highest court in the United States is not willing to address the issue of innocence and new evidence. We live in country that is supposed to promote democracy and human rights for other countries yet it is not unconstitutional for us to execute innocent people in the U.S. if the courts feel they received a fair trial.

I am both enraged and empowered, for this battle to save Troy is a war of life and death for me! Until there is no breath left in my body I will fight for Troy, fight against the injustice of the death penalty, because this battle is bigger than Troy it is a war against a system is not impartial, a system that cares less for fairness and more for finality. In no way have we ever diminished the loss and hurt of the McPhail family, yet both families have been victimized. Being a mother and having Stage 4 cancer I understand the importance of life and I am willing to give my life to spare my brother's. No matter the final outcome of this case, my war against the death penalty is far from over and I will no longer be a victimize by this system in the United States, that justice depends on your ability to pay for it.

The hearing held in June 2010 in Savannah was like a puppet show, it was entertaining to some, upsetting to others, yet once the judge opened his mouth and looked at my brother with disgust I knew that no matter what Troy's lawyers had to present the judge had already made his decision to deny Troy, so he was just going through the motions like a puppeteer. I saluted the witnesses, even though they were criminalized by the state prosecutor for recanting their trial testimony. When they testified against Troy all those years ago, the police treated them like heroes, even though they had the same criminal history in 1989. It also seemed amazing that all the police who testified had amnesia about their role of misconduct with the witnesses, yet the judge chose to believe them over recanted testimony of the very witnesses they used to secure a conviction and death sentence for my brother.

The Georgia Parole Board said they will not execute when there is doubt. The case of Troy Anthony Davis is full of doubt.

As Troy said to me, "It's not over 'til God says it's over, this fight for justice did not begin with me and will not end with me."

The battle for Justice and the War to save Troy wages on! My name is Martina Correia and I am on Death Row because that is where my brother lives, our lives intertwined. If Troy is executed he will become even more powerful, because people all around the world are saying, "I AM TROY DAVIS," and his story will be heard.

Source: Opinion, Martina Correia, The Grio, April 3, 2011
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URGENT APPEAL for Sherko Moarefi due to be executed in Iran on May 1, 2011

A Kurdish man, Sherko Moarefi, is scheduled to be executed on 1 May, in the western Iranian province of Kordestan. He was convicted of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) for his purported membership of a proscribed Kurdish opposition group.

Sherko Moarefi was detained in October 2008, after which he was sentenced to death for “acting against national security” and “enmity against God”. In October 2009, he and two other Kurdish political prisoners, Ehsan Fattahian and Habibollah Latifi, were at imminent risk of execution after a judge in the capital of Kordestan, Sanandaj, ordered that they be executed. This was possibly a reprisal in response to a spate of attacks on Iranian officials in September 2009, for which the authorities blamed the Party For Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), a Kurdish armed group, although the group denied responsibility. Ehsan Fattahian, was executed on 11 November 2009.

Sherko Moarefi’s death sentence was upheld first by an Appeal Court and then by the Supreme Court. His court-appointed lawyer stated in an interview on 18 October 2009 that his request to the Amnesty and Clemency Commission had been rejected and that he had applied for a judicial review. This, too, was denied.

Habibollah Latifi, an industrial engineering student at Ilam University in western Iran was later scheduled to be executed on 26 December 2010, but this was not carried out due to international pressure, from Amnesty International and others. He remains at risk, although no new date is known to have been set for his execution (see UA 271/09, 8 October 2009 and follow up). At least 14 other Kurdish political prisoners are known to be on death row.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Kurds, who are one of Iran’s many minority groups, live mainly in the west and north-west of the country, in the province of Kordestan and neighboring provinces bordering Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iraq. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights (see: Iran: Human rights abuses against the Kurdish minority, (Index: MDE 13/088/2008), 30 July 2008 at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/088/2008/en ). For many years, Kurdish organizations such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Marxist group Komala conducted armed struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran. An alleged member of the KDPI, Farhad Taram, was reported by Kurdish sources to have been executed in secret in February 2011. A further group, the Party For Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), was formed in 2004, and carried out armed attacks against Iranian security forces, but declared a unilateral ceasefire in 2009, although it still engages in armed clashes with security forces in what it terms “self-defense”. Hossein Khezri, a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority, is feared to have been executed on 15 January 2011 in north-western Iran after being convicted of “enmity against God” on account of his membership of the Party for Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). The authorities have announced that a PJAK member was executed on 15 January 2011 but without naming the individual. On 16 January 2011, PJAK issued a statement pledging an “appropriate response” to what they clearly believe to have been Hossein Khezri’s execution and calling for a week of “resistance” to Iran.

Amnesty International condemns without reservation attacks on civilians, which includes judges, clerics, and locally or nationally-elected officials, as attacking civilians violates fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. These principles prohibit absolutely attacks on civilians as well as indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. Such attacks cannot be justified under any circumstances.

The scope of capital crimes in Iran is broad. The death penalty is one of four possible punishments for those convicted of moharebeh, a charge often brought against those accused of armed opposition to the state. Other capital crimes include other national security offenses such as espionage. At least 13 other Kurdish men and one Kurdish woman are believed to be on death row in connection with their alleged membership of and activities for proscribed Kurdish organizations. They include Sami Hosseini, Jamal Mohammadi, Rashid Akhkandi, Rostam Arkia, Anvar Rostami, Mostafa Salimi, Mohammad Amin Abdollahi, Ghader (or Aziz) Mohammadzadeh, Hassan Talai, Habibollah Golparipour, Abdollah Sorouri, Loghman (or Loqman) Moradi, Zaniar Moradi (who was only 17 when arrested) and Zeynab Jalalian. Some have had initial prison sentences increased to death sentences.

December 2010 and January 2011 saw an alarming rise in executions, mainly of individuals convicted of offenses related to trafficking and possession of illegal drugs. Officially announced executions declined in February and March possibly in advance of a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council calling for a Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran to be created. Human rights activists in Iran have expressed concern that the rate of executions may resume after the Nowrouz (New Year) holiday which ends in early April. Reports suggest that dozens of prisoners from Qezel Hesar Prison, including many on death row, have been transferred to Evin Prison. A prison riot broke out in Qezel Hesar Prison in mid-March in which at least 14 people were killed, according to official media sources. The cause of the riot was said to include protests at attempts by the authorities to remove some death row prisoners for execution (for further information see Deaths in Iranian prison must be investigated, 17 March 2011,http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/deaths-iranian-prison-must-be-investigated-2011-03-17)

In 2010 the Iranian authorities acknowledged the execution of 252 people, including five women and one juvenile offender. Amnesty International received credible reports of more than 300 other executions which were not officially acknowledged, mostly of alleged drugs offenders in Vakilabad Prison, Mashhad.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

- Urging the Iranian authorities to halt the execution of Sherko Moarefi, scheduled for 1 May;

- Calling on them to commute the death sentences of Sherko Moarefi, Habibollah Latifi and all other Kurdish political prisoners;

- Stating that Amnesty International recognizes the right and responsibility of governments to bring to justice, in conformity with international standards of fair trial, those suspected of criminal offenses, but opposes the death penalty as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

APPEALS TO:

Leader of the Islamic Republic

Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei

The Office of the Supreme Leader

Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street

Tehran

IRAN

Email: info_leader@leader.ir

via website: http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=letter (English)

Twitter: @khamenei_ir (please add #Iran in the body of the message which cannot exceed 140 characters,

including spaces and punctuation)

Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Judiciary

Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani

[care of] Public relations Office

Number 4, 2 Azizi Street

Vali Asr Ave., above Pasteur Street intersection

Tehran

IRAN

Email: bia.judi@yahoo.com (In subject line: FAO Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani)

Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO:

Secretary General, High Council for Human Rights

Mohammad Javad Larijani

High Council for Human Rights

[Care of] Office of the Head of the Judiciary, Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave. south of Serah-e Jomhouri,

Tehran 1316814737

IRAN

Email: info@humanrights-iran.ir (subject line: FAO Mohammad Javad Larijani)

Salutation: Dear Sir

Iran does not presently have an embassy in the United States. Instead, please send copies to:

Iranian Interests Section

2209 Wisconsin Ave NW

Washington DC 20007

Phone: 202 965 4990

Fax: 1 202 965 1073

Email: requests@daftar.org

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

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Danish company won't withdraw US execution drug

Danish company rejects capital punishment but won't withdraw US execution drug

A Danish company that unwittingly has become a key supplier of an execution drug in the U.S. says it's not going to withdraw or restrict it, even though it objects to the chemical being "misused" for capital punishment.

Lundbeck A/S is doing "all we can" to dissuade U.S. states from using pentobarbital for lethal injections, but won't pull it from the U.S. market, CEO Ulf Wiinberg told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Pentobarbital is a sedative with a range of medical uses, including treatment of epileptic seizures. It also is used to euthanize animals.

"Financially speaking this is not an important product for us and we thought about whether we should withdraw it and the reaction we got from doctors was that they didn't want us to withdraw the product," Wiinberg said at the drug maker's annual shareholders meeting in Copenhagen.

As the only company making the drug, Lundbeck found itself in an awkward position as death penalty states started switching to pentobarbital for lethal injections to replace another chemical that's no longer readily available.

Pentobarbital has already been used to execute prisoners in Ohio and Oklahoma. The first execution in Texas using pentobarbital is scheduled for next week. Mississippi and Arizona are also considering switching to pentobarbital for lethal injections.

"One of our products is being misused," Wiinberg said. "When we heard about this, we went out and took a very clear position, saying we are against the misuse of our product and that we, as an organization, made it clear that we are against death penalty."

Lundbeck A/S has written letters to prison authorities in U.S. states asking them not to use pentobarbital for lethal injections, but to no avail so far.

The company is now coming under pressure from human rights groups opposed to the death penalty to take stronger action, such as rewriting distribution contracts with clauses prohibiting sales of pentobarbital to U.S. prisons.

Lundbeck rejected that idea, saying it would be impossible for distributors to follow up on how every vial is used. Lundbeck says it sells about 50 million doses of pentobarbital a year.

"We don't believe it will work and we will not do it," Wiinberg told AP.

Related article: "Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck votes to continue supplying pentobarbital for lethal injections", Reprieve, March 25, 2011

Contact Lundbeck,  send an email (contact@lundbeck.com) and/or sign an online petition demanding Lundbeck's widthdrawal of execution drug.

Source: Associated Press, March 30, 2011

Danes won't block execution drug

A Danish company that unwittingly has become a key supplier of an execution drug in the U.S. says it's not going to withdraw or restrict it, even though it objects to the chemical being "misused" for capital punishment.

Lundbeck A/S is doing "all we can" to dissuade U.S. states from using pentobarbital for lethal injections, but won't pull it from the U.S. market, CEO Ulf Wiinberg told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Pentobarbital is a sedative with a range of medical uses, including treatment of epileptic seizures. It also is used to euthanize animals.

"Financially speaking this is not an important product for us and we thought about whether we should withdraw it and the reaction we got from doctors was that they didn't want us to withdraw the product," Wiinberg said at the drug maker's annual shareholders meeting in Copenhagen.

As the only company making the drug, Lundbeck found itself in an awkward position as death penalty states started switching to pentobarbital for lethal injections to replace another chemical that's no longer readily available.

Pentobarbital has already been used to execute prisoners in Ohio and Oklahoma. The first execution in Texas using pentobarbital is scheduled for next week. Mississippi and Arizona are also considering switching to pentobarbital for lethal injections.

"One of our products is being misused," Wiinberg said. "When we heard about this, we went out and took a very clear position, saying we are against the misuse of our product and that we, as an organization, made it clear that we are against death penalty."

Lundbeck A/S has written letters to prison authorities in U.S. states asking them not to use pentobarbital for lethal injections, but to no avail so far.

The company is now coming under pressure from human rights groups opposed to the death penalty to take stronger action, such as rewriting distribution contracts with clauses prohibiting sales of pentobarbital to U.S. prisons.

Lundbeck rejected that idea, saying it would be impossible for distributors to follow up on how every vial is used. Lundbeck says it sells about 50 million doses of pentobarbital a year.

"We don't believe it will work and we will not do it," Wiinberg told the AP.

London-based human rights group Reprieve called the decision "disappointing and cowardly."

"We had hoped for a more courageous response, but apparently Lundbeck would rather preserve their U.S. commercial interests than prisoners' lives," Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said in an email to the AP.

The sudden demand for pentobarbital comes amid a shortage of sodium thiopental, another sedative that is part of the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by nearly all 34 states that implement death penalty.

The manufacturer of that drug, Hospira Inc., said in January it would cease production, sending states scrambling for ways to fill their inventories to keep their executions on track. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration this month seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental over questions about how it imported the drug from Britain.

Hospira quit production when lawmakers in Italy, home of the company's new factory, demanded assurances that the substance would not be used in executions.

Authorities in Denmark, which also opposes the death penalty, are not expected to intervene against Lundbeck, because the plant where it makes pentobarbital is in Kansas. So death penalty opponents are hoping Lundbeck's shareholders will apply pressure on management to take action, though there was little discussion about the issue Wednesday at Lundbeck's steel-and-glass headquarters in the Danish capital.

"It is of course an unpleasant case but Lundbeck has not done anything wrong," said Niels Aage Larsen, who represents a Danish shareholders association with 5,000 members. "Like a producer of knives, they cannot know how and where their products are being used."

Among Lundbeck's institutional investors are Scandinavian pension funds, including oil-rich Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, which at the end of 2010 held a 0.68 percent stake in Lundbeck worth 150 million Norwegian kroner (about $25 million).

The fund has strict ethical guidelines banning investments in tobacco companies and some weapons firms. The guidelines don't specifically address companies associated with capital punishment, but "it can't be excluded" that such companies would come under scrutiny, said Gro Nystuen, who chairs the fund's ethical council.

She wouldn't say whether the council is reviewing the fund's stake in Lundbeck because such deliberations are confidential until a decision is made.

"We are well aware of the case and the company," she added.

Source: Associated Press, March 30, 2011
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China executes 3 Filipinos despite Manila’s appeals for clemency

Chinese mobile execution unit
training for lethal injection

China on Wednesday executed three Filipinos who were convicted of drug smuggling despite last-minute appeals for clemency and political concessions by Philippine leaders, officials said.

The three had not been told they would be executed Wednesday, although their sentences were promulgated early in the day, Philippine Consul Noel Novicio said. It was the first time that Philippine citizens were executed in China.

China normally does not announce executions. Amnesty International says China is the world's biggest executioner, with thousands of convicts killed every year. The Philippines has abolished the death penalty.

Mr. Novicio said Sally Ordinario-Villanueva and Ramon Credo met their families early Wednesday before they were put to death by lethal injection in Xiamen city in southeastern China. The third Filipino, Elizabeth Batain, was allowed to meet with her relatives hours ahead of her execution in southeastern Shenzhen city, he said.

“They gave us only one hour (with her). They have no mercy,” Ms. Ordinario-Villanueva's sister, Maylene Ordinario, said in a text message from Xiamen to her family in the Philippines.

She said her sister had been blessed by a priest and “she said she wants to be forgiven for all her sins, but she insisted that she was a victim.”

“She asked us to take care of her children, to take care of each other and to help one another. I have not accepted what will happen. We are forcing ourselves to accept it, but I can't,” she told Manila radio station DZBB.

Neighbours, relatives and activists held overnight vigils at the homes of the condemned, offering prayers to the distraught family members. The dominant Roman Catholic Church, which opposes the death penalty, held a special Mass in Manila.

Loretta Ann Rosales, head of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, in a statement told the Chinese government: “More than I respect your laws, I respect the fundamental right to life of every human being.”

The three were arrested separately in 2008 carrying packages containing at least 4 kilograms of heroin. They were convicted and sentenced in 2009.

The Philippine government's appeals for clemency included three letters by President Benigno Aquino III to his Chinese counterpart and a February visit to Beijing by the vice-president, which prompted China to postpone the executions by a month. The government said it was able to prove that a drug syndicate took advantage of the Filipinos and that Philippine authorities had succeeded in identifying and arresting some of its members.

Jayson Ordinario, Ms. Ordinario-Villanueva's younger brother, said last week that his sister was hired as a cellphone dealer in Xiamen and was tricked into carrying a bag that had a secret compartment loaded with heroin, allegedly by her job recruiter.

China defended the executions.

“Drug trafficking is universally recognized as a severe crime,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters at a regular news conference Tuesday in Beijing. “In China, our judicial authorities handled the case independently and we grant equal treatment to foreign drug traffickers. ... China has fulfilled its international obligations in the process.”

She added, “We'd like to stress this is an isolated individual case. We would not like to see any impact on bilateral relations.”

Smuggling more than 50 grams of heroin or other drugs is punishable by death in China.

In other moves reportedly related to the Filipinos' case, Mr. Aquino decided not to send a representative to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in December in Oslo, Norway, honouring a jailed Chinese dissident. Manila also deported to Beijing last month 14 Taiwanese facing fraud charges in China despite protests from Taipei.

The plight of Filipinos overseas is an emotional issue in the Philippines and one of the pillars of the country's foreign policy. About 10 per cent of the Philippines' 94 million people toil abroad to escape widespread poverty and unemployment at home.

Source: The Globe and Mail, March 30, 2011

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Yong Vui Kong's verdict scheduled

Yong Vui Kong

The Singapore Court of Appeal will convene at 10am next Monday, 4th April to pass judgment on Vui Kong's appeal of the High Court's judgment on judicial review. As President SR Nathan has admitted that the powers to decide clemency for death row convicts rest on the Cabinet and not him, Vui Kong may have exhausted the last of his lifeline and his life may hinge on the decision of the CoA's verdict this coming Monday.

We have also heard that since Vui Kong's appeal started, there has been an unofficial temporary stay of execution for all prisoners on death row, pending the decision of the court on Yong's case. If the verdict goes south, then we may well see a Changi gallows bloodbath in a scale not seen since the Pulau Senang uprising in 1965 when 18 men convicted of murdering a prison warden were hanged in a single Friday morning,

To give Vui Kong, his family and his counsel moral support through this difficult period, please visit the official Save Vui Kong Facebook page. Click here to signe an online petition urging Singapore's President to give Yong Vui Kong a second chance.

Source: The Death Penalty in Singapore, March 29, 2011

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Arizona executes Eric John King

Eric John King

FLORENCE, Ariz. — A man convicted of killing two people in a 1989 Phoenix convenience store robbery was executed Tuesday despite last-minute arguments by his attorneys who raised questions over one of the lethal injection drugs and said they had raised “substantial doubt” about his guilt.

Eric John King’s death at the state prison in Florence was the first execution in the state since October and one of the last expected to use a three-drug lethal injection cocktail.

The 47-year-old had maintained his innocence since his arrest and his lawyers fought until the last minute to get his sentence reversed or delayed.

Defense attorney Mike Burke said before the execution that he visited with King on Tuesday morning.

“Although he’s very calm, he continues to maintain his innocence,” Burke told The Associated Press. “He’s done what he can do. All he has left to do is maintain his dignity.”

The Arizona Supreme Court declined to stay King’s execution Monday after Burke argued that the state should wait until it enacts its new lethal injection protocol. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Corrections Director Charles Ryan announced Friday that Arizona will switch to using just one drug in an effort to allay any “perceived concerns” that sodium thiopental is ineffective, but only after the scheduled executions of King and Daniel Wayne Cook on April 5.

Defense attorney Michael Burke had argued that the Department of Corrections may have engaged in fraud when it imported the sedative from Great Britain by listing it on forms as being for “animals (food processing),” not humans.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said the mislabeling resulted from a clerical error.

Arizona obtained the drug legally, and that’s why it has been able to avoid problems other states have had, Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani has said. Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental was seized by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents on March 15 over questions about how it was obtained.

The drug is part of the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by nearly all 34 death penalty states, but it became scarce last year after the sole U.S. manufacturer stopped making it.

Some states started obtaining sodium thiopental overseas, and lawyers have argued that potentially adulterated, counterfeit or ineffective doses could subject prisoners to extreme pain.

Texas and Oklahoma recently announced they are switching from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital in their three-drug protocol. Ohio has switched to using only pentobarbital for its executions, and Ryan said that’s the drug Arizona might start using.

Burke also was unable to successfully argue that King be granted clemency at a hearing Thursday. Burke had argued that the two key witnesses who testified against King at his trial have changed their stories, that no physical evidence exists and surveillance video used at trial was of extremely poor quality.

Vince Imbordino, a prosecutor with the Maricopa County attorney’s office, argued that the photographic evidence was clear and that if jurors didn’t believe King was guilty, they wouldn’t have convicted him.

King was convicted of fatally shooting security guard Richard Butts and clerk Ron Barman at a Phoenix convenience store two days after Christmas in 1989. Butts and Barman both were married fathers whose families have testified that their deaths in a robbery that netted $72 devastated them.

Shortly before the killings, King had been released from a seven-year prison term on kidnapping and sexual assault charges. Police say King, who was 18 at the time, and another man kidnapped a woman and took her to an abandoned house, where both repeatedly and brutally sexually assaulted her over six hours.

Before he was sentenced in that crime, deputy adult probation officer Lee Brinkmoeller wrote that King had plans to reform himself.

“The defendant’s plans for the future are to become a machinist and to have his own car, house, family, and start being able to do things for his mother for all the things she has done for him,” Brinkmoeller wrote. “He states that he wants to have his mother be proud of him before she dies and he wants to be somebody.”

Court documents show King had a troubled childhood. Born in a taxi on the way to the hospital in Phoenix, King was one of 12 siblings whose alcoholic, abusive and mentally disturbed father died of a heart attack when King was 11, according to court records.

Records also say King’s mother struggled to provide for the children, who were so hungry at times that they tried to catch crawdads in irrigation canals and frequently were without electricity.

King reported to a prison psychiatrist that he had heard voices on and off his entire life, and suffered from anxiety and insomnia.

His son, 20-year-old Eric Harrison, saw King for the first time Thursday at the clemency hearing and asked the board to spare his father.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen my dad, ever in life, and I know I love him,” Harrison said. “That’s my dad. He gave me life. Just don’t take him.”

King is the 23rd death row inmates Arizona has executed with the three-drug method since it began using lethal injection in 1993.

The state had previously executed 38 inmates with lethal gas since it started using that method in 1934. Another 28 inmates were executed by hanging between 1910 and 1931.

Source: AP, March 29, 2011

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China turns down final plea for stay of execution of Filipino drug mules

China has turned down the Philippine government's final plea for another—perhaps permanent—stay of execution for convicted Filipino drug mules Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, Elizabeth Batain and Ramon Credo.

Ethan Y. Sun, spokesman of the Chinese Embassy in Makati City, on Monday told the Inquirer that Beijing's position on the issue had been "made clear" as early as last February when the Supreme People's Court in the Chinese capital sentenced the three convicts to death.

"The position of the Chinese side has been made clear on its judicial decision," Sun said.

Last Saturday, Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao asked for understanding from the Philippine government and from Filipinos about the executions that he said would now have to take place under their laws.

On March 24, the Department of Foreign Affairs announced the executions will be carried out on Wednesday.

Villanueva, 32, and Credo, 42, will be executed in Xiamen, and Batain, 38, in Shenzhen, said the DFA.

The 3 were arrested separately in 2008 for smuggling 4 to 6 kilograms of heroin to China.

China had postponed the executions, originally scheduled for February 20, following an official visit to Beijing by Vice President Jejomar Binay on President Aquino’s behalf.

The President on Saturday told reporters they had been "communicating (with Chinese authorities) continuously ... We're still trying to get them to reduce the penalty. But there's a limit to what we can do."

Aquino also said, "At the end of the day, these were crimes committed in a different country. It doesn't help that they admitted they were doing something illegal."

"But it doesn't make us stop trying," he added.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 28, 2011

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High court rejects appeal from Troy Davis

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, clearing the way for the state to resume planning for Davis' execution.

The justices on Monday refused to order the federal appeals court in Atlanta to examine Davis' case and they declined to do so themselves.

In 2009, the high court ordered a federal judge to examine evidence Davis said would show he was innocent of the 1989 killing for which he has been sentenced to death.

But the judge decided last year that Davis had failed to clear his name.

At the moment, executions are on hold in Georgia after federal agents seized the state's supply of a key lethal injection drug.

Source: Associated Press, March 28, 2011

Appeal denied in high-profile US death row case

The US Supreme Court Monday rejected an appeal to death row inmate Troy Davis who is seeking a new trial after 7 of the 9 witnesses against him recanted their murder trial testimony.

The Supreme Court rejected a request for an appeal hearing submitted by lawyers on behalf of Davis, a 42-year-old convicted of murdering a police officer in the southern state of Georgia in August 1989.

The decision clears the way for the execution of Davis, who has been on death row in Georgia since 1991 but has always maintained his innocence.

Davis's conviction rested on the testimony of the 9 witnesses, with no direct physical evidence such as a murder weapon, DNA or fingerprints linking him to the crime.

After a series of failed earlier appeals, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in August 2009 allowing Davis to present what he claimed was exculpatory evidence that was not reasonably available during his trial.

But after the rare hearing in August 2010, the judge decided there was not enough evidence to prove Davis's innocence.

With its racial overtones -- Davis is black, the officer Mark Allen MacPhail was white -- and the prisoner's continued claims of innocence, the case has triggered an international outcry.

Critics have included the European Union, whose member states oppose the death penalty, as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Pope Benedict XVI.

Source: Agence France-Presse, March 28, 2011

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Saudi man executed for murder

March 24, 2011: a Saudi citizen convicted of murdering another Saudi was executed in the city of Khamis Mushayt in the southern Asir province, the Ministry of Interior announced.

Saeed bin Safar Al-Humaid was convicted of stabbing Muhammad bin Saeed Abu Mahroos to death following an argument between the two, said a ministry statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency. He was sentenced to death by the general court in Abha.

The execution was carried out after the Court of Cassation ratified the sentence.

Sources: Arab News, March 25, 2011

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China/Philippines: Kin to hand-carry letter pleading for drug mule’s life

The family of 1 of the 3 Filipino drug mules scheduled to die by lethal injection in China next week will hand-carry a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao begging for the life of 32-year-old Sally Ordinario-Villanueva when they fly to China on Sunday.

"We ... beg for her life and humbly ask that she be granted clemency by Your Excellency," the letter, addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao, the letter reads.

"Your Excellency, death penalty is too severe a punishment for an unknowing housewife, merely used by criminal syndicates," it says.

The Ordinario family said they realize that the government's diplomatic appeals for clemency in behalf of the three Filipinos might already have been exhausted.

"This appeal is not a diplomatic move ... This time we are making a personal appeal by the family," said the Ordinarios' lawyer Jeremiah Belgica, who called a press conference at the Manila Yacht Club on Saturday.

Edith Ordinario, Sally's mother, said the family was grateful to the government, particularly Vice President Jejomar Binay and the Department of Foreign Affairs, for their efforts in trying to save the lives of the 3 Filipinos on death row.

Binay, upon the instructions of President Aquino, on Friday wrote President Hu to make a "last appeal" for clemency. On Saturday, the Vice President made a call for prayers.

"Let us pray for another miracle, that the lives of our "kababayans" (compatriots) will be spared. Let us not lose hope," Binay said in a statement.

Edith, her husband Geronimo and two of their children will fly to China on Sunday for a last chance to see Sally.

"The DFA said we had the option to watch (the execution) but I said no... It was the family's decision. We don't want to see her die," he said.

Sally and Ramon Credo, 42, will be executed in Xiamen, and Elizabeth Batain, 38, in Shenzhen. They were arrested separately in China in 2008 for carrying several kilograms of heroin, and convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death in 2009.

The three were originally scheduled to be executed on February 20 and 21, but a visit to Beijing and appeals for clemency by a high-level Philippine delegation led by Binay moved China to postpone the execution.

On Wednesday, the DFA announced that the execution would happen on March 30.

The Ordinarios' letter cited the efforts by the family to catch who they called the real perpetrators in Sally's indictment, including her brother Jayson's successful undercover attempt to track down the recruiter who allegedly tricked her into smuggling drugs into China.

They insisted that Sally was not a member of a drug syndicate but a victim. Their letter detailed how the family set out to uncover members of the syndicate who allegedly victimized Sally.

"2 years ago, our beloved Sally left for China with high hopes for a bright future for her family: she would be buying and selling cellular phones from China to the Philippines. Her recruiter gave her luggage to put her clothes in, without knowing it contained 4.1 kilos of heroin. This led to her apprehension and death sentencing in your country, your Excellency," they said.

The family narrated further how Jayson, desperate to prove his sister's innocence, approached Sally's recruiter for a job, pretending not to have known what happened to her.

This led Philippine authorities to the arrest and indict eight members of the drug syndicate, the Ordinarios said.

"We believe that by our family's actions and sacrifices, we have contributed to your country's battle against the international illegal drug trade," they said in the letter.

"We only ask your Excellency to reduce her sentence in accordance to your country's law and let her live. Our whole clan will be forever grateful to you and we will continue to fight this evil of drugs," they said.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 26, 2011

Prayer vigil for Pinoys on China death row

Police officers practise executing prisoners
with a shot to the head during a police
drill in Nanning, Guangxi, southern China

Filipinos offered prayers and lighted candles to appeal for clemency for the three convicted Filipino drug couriers facing execution in China. Migrante International started a week-long action to save the lives of Filipinos in China death row.

The “The Fujian People’s Court and Guangdong High People’s Court upheld the execution through lethal injection of Sally Ordinario-Villanueva,32, Elizabeth Batain, 38, and Ramon Credo, 42. The execution will be carried out on March 30.

The three were originally scheduled to be executed last February 20 and 21 but the Chinese government granted temporary reprieve after Vice President Jejomar Binay relayed the Philippine government’s official appeal last month.

Binay who is also the Presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers’ (OFW) concerns, said he will keep seeking clemency for the three Filipinos. He assured the relatives the convicts that he will continue to work to get the sentences commuted.

Migrante expressed hoped that the convicted Filipinos will be spared and instead a lesser penalty will be considered by Chinese authorities. “We are still hoping, though a chance of another postponement of execution is very slim,” said Migrante coordinator John Leonard Monterona.

The group further said the three drug smugglers are “victims of syndicates and victims of poverty and hopelessness."

“If only our Philippine authorities have been more watchful over the plight of Filipinos here and abroad and have provided them much-needed assistance, they would not be forced to engage with drug syndicates,” Garry Martinez, Migrante chairman said in a statement.

Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said, "we will try to (appeal) but we have to respect the decision of the Chinese authorities on that matter. Again, it was unprecedented that they granted us a stay... and this was the 1st time that they did it for an ally."

President Benigno Aquino III earlier said that there is a limit as to what the Philippine can do for Filipinos facing death in China. Migrante said if the execution is carried out next week “it will be blood on the hands of Aquino."

Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said the government provided all possible legal and consular assistance to the convicted Filipinos. “Manila will respect the final ruling of China’s high tribunal,” DFA spokesman Ed Malaya Jr. said.

The week-long activities for the appeal will culminate in a vigil at the Plaza Miranda in Manila on March 29, the eve of the execution. On March 30, OFWs, families and other sectors will march to Mendiola.

Credo and Villanueva are set to be executed in Xiamen while the death penalty on Batain will be carried out in Shenzhen.

Villanueva, Batain and Credo are among the 227 Filipinos jailed for drug-related offenses in China. Of the total, 72 have received the death penalty with possible commutation, 38 meted life imprisonment, 78 sentenced to 15 years in prison and 35 currently on trial. Only 6 cases have reached the Supreme Court - 2 sentences overturned, 3 affirmed and 1 still being reviewed, according to a report.

125 OFWs are also facing death sentences abroad. Out of the 125, 85 cases are drug-related with 79 OFWs imprisoned in China jails while the rest are in Middle East, Malaysia and Thailand.

Source Philippine Online Chronicles, March 26, 2011

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Texas: House Committee Set to Hear Repeal Bill

Polunsky Unit, Texas

(Austin, Texas) — On Tuesday, March 29, 2011 the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee will hold a public hearing on House Bill (HB) 819, which calls for the repeal of the death penalty in Texas. The hearing will take place at the State Capitol in the John H. Reagan Building (JHR) 120 (upon final adjournment/recess of the House).

“National momentum is clearly shifting in the direction of abolition,” said State Representative Jessica Farrar, the author of HB 819, along with State Representatives Marisa Marquez and Alma Allen. “Earlier this month, Illinois became the 16th state, and the 4th in recent years, to abandon the death penalty. In addition, elected officials in at least 12 other states are considering repeal legislation this year. This hearing provides members of the Texas House of Representatives with the opportunity to engage in open dialogue about the flaws and failures of our state’s capital punishment system.”

Rep. Farrar first introduced this bill – which strikes the death penalty as a sentencing option from all relevant sections of the Texas Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure and replaces it with life in prison without the possibility of parole – in 2007. In 2009, the Subcommittee on Capital Punishment of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee considered testimony from attorneys, religious leaders, academics, and individuals impacted directly by violent crime. Among those scheduled to testify before the full committee this year are:

* Chris Castillo, National Outreach Coordinator for Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation. Chris’s mother, Pilar Castillo, was murdered in Houston in 1991; to date, no one has been held accountable for this crime.

* Reverend Carroll Pickett, a Presbyterian minister who served as the death house chaplain at the Walls Unit in Huntsville for 15 years and accompanied 95 men to their deaths by execution. He was present for the first U.S. execution by lethal injection, when Charlie Brooks was put to death in Texas on December 7, 1982.

* Professor Dennis Longmire, Sam Houston State University, who will speak about the cost of the death penalty.

“During this time of fiscal crisis, the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) urges all elected officials to take a good hard look at the death penalty system and ask whether this is a good use of tax payers’ dollars when there are alternative ways to protect society and punish those who are truly guilty,” said Kristin Houlé, TCADP Executive Director. “We strongly endorse HB 819 and urge the members House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee to support this important legislation.”

Source: Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP), March 25, 2011

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Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck votes to continue supplying pentobarbital for lethal injections

Danish manufacturer Lundbeck has today missed a major and historic opportunity to change the face of the U.S. capital punishment system. By choosing not to put measures in place to prevent its drugs being used to kill people, the company has opened its doors to executioners all over the country.

Lundbeck and its shareholders will now be responsible for potentially hundreds of deaths, as executing states snap up Lundbeck’s pentobarbital, a dangerous and experimental lethal injection drug, to kill prisoners.

Recent shortages of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental have forced prisons in Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio to abandon the standard three-drug protocol used by the majority of executing states, turning instead to pentobarbital as an untested alternative. As the only licensed supplier of pentobarbital in the United States, Lundbeck has the power to halt countless executions by putting in place ‘end-user agreements’ with its customers. Such agreements would stop intermediaries selling Lundbeck’s chemicals on to state penitentiaries, thus preventing Danish drugs from ending up in the veins of condemned prisoners.

According to a source within Lundbeck, the company’s managers were so afraid that their distributors would not like their amended contracts that they decided to avoid taking action.

Lundbeck’s decision will open the floodgates in terms of encouraging executing states to adopt pentobarbital for use in executions. The method is considered highly dangerous because the drug, a sedative, was not designed for executions and has no clinical history of such use.

Reprieve Investigator Maya Foa said:

“By refusing to alter their contracts, Lundbeck has effectively elected to become the primary supplier of drugs for U.S. executions. They have consistently declared their desire not to facilitate capital punishment, and yet presented with the opportunity to turn their words into deeds, they have rejected it. This is an extremely disappointing and cowardly response.”

For more information please contact Katherine O’Shea at Reprieve’s Press Office katherine.oshea@reprieve.org.uk / 020 7427 1099 / 07931592674.

Background:

In the summer of 2010, the only US manufacturer of execution drug sodium thiopental, Hospira, ceased production of the substance due to a shortage of raw materials, forcing Departments of Corrections in executing states to source their drugs from overseas. Reprieve discovered that a company in Britain was supplying these chemicals and set out to stop British complicity in executions. The approved execution protocol in the United States consists of a cocktail of three drugs: sodium thiopental (also known as thiopental sodium and pentothal) supposedly anaesthetizes the victim, before pancuronium bromide paralyses the muscles and potassium chloride stops the heart.

On 25th October 2010, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed in Arizona using sodium thiopental imported from Britain. The lawyers of Edmund Zagorski, a man who has spent 28 years of his life on death row in Tennessee, subsequently contacted Reprieve with the information that the Tennessee Department of Corrections was seeking to purchase their own supply of sodium thiopental from the same company. Reprieve and lawyers Leigh Day & Co contacted members of the government, asking them to put in place emergency measures to prevent the export of the chemical, and thus stay Edmund's execution. Business Secretary Vince Cable and Jeremy Browne MP on behalf of the FCO declined to take such a step.

Reprieve therefore filed for judicial review of the government’s failure to prevent British complicity in executions. Counsel for the government initially argued that it was not worth imposing an export ban as executing states would source their sodium thiopental from elsewhere, but on 29th November Vince Cable finally agreed to put in place a system of controls making it illegal to export sodium thiopental from the UK to the US.

Shortly afterwards, Reprieve discovered that the British company responsible was Dream Pharma, a tiny pharmaceutical wholesalers operating out of the back of a driving academy in Acton, and that it had already exported a substantial quantity of sodium thiopental – as well as the other two lethal injection chemicals – before the ban came into force. We asked Matt Alavi, the Managing Director of Dream Pharma, for his help in mitigating the damage done by his quest for profit; he had been selling sodium thiopental for between six and twelve times its recommended price, knowing that it was to be used in lethal injections. Mr Alavi refused, and the drugs he supplied have already been used to kill three people: Brandon Rhode and Emanuel Hammond in Georgia, as well as Jeffrey Landrigan.

Disturbingly, it seems that Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental may not have been properly effective as an anaesthetic, and that Brandon and Emanuel may therefore have been in agony during their executions. Dr Mark Heath, a renowned lethal injection expert, filed a sworn declaration stating that the fact that Brandon's eyes remained open throughout his execution was highly unusual and strongly suggested that he was not properly anaesthetized and therefore conscious throughout the process. He also wrote that:

“...if the thiopental was inadequately effective Mr Rhode’s death would certainly have been agonizing; 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.”

Reprieve is currently asking Business Secretary Vince Cable to put in place strict measures regulating the export of pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride from the UK. We are also asking the governments of Austria and Germany, where sodium thiopental and its active ingredients are still manufactured, to follow Britain in imposing a full export ban on the drug. Hospira, which originally intended to begin manufacturing sodium thiopental destined for American penitentiaries in an Italian factory, announced in January that it would be ceasing all production of the drug.

The use of pentobarbital in executions is experimental and considered highly dangerous because the drug, a sedative, was not designed to be used as an anaesthetic. According to Dr. David Waisel, Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School: “The use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anesthesia has no clinical history and is non-standard… the combination of significant unknowns… puts the inmate at risk of serious undue pain and suffering.”

About Reprieve:

Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 27 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.

Reprieve has represented, and continues to represent, a large number of prisoners who have been rendered and abused around the world, and is conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of ‘ghost prisoners’ in the so-called ‘war on terror.’

Reprieve

PO Box 52742

London EC4P 4WS

Email: info@reprieve.org.uk

Website: www.reprieve.org.uk

Source: Reprieve, March 25, 2011

Contact Lundbeck,  send an email (contact@lundbeck.com) and/or sign an online petition demanding Lundbeck's widthdrawal of execution drug.

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Arizona: Execution-drug import papers raise questions

3 shipments of drugs imported by the Arizona Department of Corrections were represented to U.S. customs and Food and Drug Administration officials as being for use on animals despite being intended for use in inmate executions.

According to documents obtained by The Arizona Republic under the federal Freedom of Information Act, 2 batches of the anesthetic sodium thiopental and 1 batch of the paralytic-drug pancuronium bromide were brought into the country from Britain last September and October and were described on federal import paperwork as being for "Animal (Food Producing)."

Thiopental, a painkiller, is used in executions to sedate the condemned convict, while pancuronium bromide renders the convict unable to move. A third drug, potassium chloride, is then injected to stop the heart.

The source of thiopental has been a matter of legal and political controversy in several U.S. states and European countries.

Defense attorneys have raised questions about whether the drugs were legally obtained and whether they were certain to be effective. Thiopental is meant to render an inmate unable to feel suffering during an execution. If the painkiller is ineffective, they attorneys argue, the execution could be cruel and unusual punishment.

Arizona has 2 executions scheduled during the next 2 weeks in which the drug is supposed to be used, although legal challenges are in the works.

State Corrections Director Charles Ryan said in a written statement that the department's execution drugs were "procured lawfully" and that the department in dealings with FDA and customs "clearly stated that the purpose for acquiring these chemicals was to carry out an execution."

It was not immediately clear whether the drugs obtained were, in fact, manufactured for animal use, or if the nature of the drugs was misstated in FDA documents.

"If FDA becomes aware of incorrect information in a filing, the agency has many options which could include further investigations and, where appropriate, pursuing civil or criminal sanctions," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said.

Thiopental is used for veterinary anesthesia but not for animal euthanasia.

Dr. Tom Doherty, a veterinary anesthesiologist in Knoxville, Ky., said, "You can mix it up in any strength you wish. But it wouldn't be used in (human) clinical use if it's labeled for animals. That wouldn't be allowed."

Burgess said federal approval of veterinary drugs takes other factors into account, such as whether the drugs are to be used on animals that are food-producing and calculating effects on the environment given that animals usually urinate and defecate on the ground.

"Animals are not equivalent to small humans. There are great species differences, and it's not always a matter of dose," Burgess said. "So, if a drug is approved for animals, it does not mean that it is safe to use in a human and vice versa."

Thiopental has been virtually unavailable in the U.S. since last summer and has not been manufactured domestically since 2009. That prompted several state governments to look to import it.

At first, the FDA officially said that there were no legal means of importing it. But late last December, after at least 5 states had obtained and used foreign drugs for executions, the agency reversed its policy and said it would not police drugs used for lethal injection.

Attorneys in several states have sued the FDA over that policy. Last week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized a thiopental supply from Georgia to investigate whether it had been legally imported. This week, attorneys in Arizona and Kentucky asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate supplies in their states.

A recent report from Great Britain indicates that there have been 12 adverse reactions to British-produced thiopental. Lawyers in several states maintain that it may not have worked efficiently in recent executions, claiming that at least 3 men died with their eyes still partly open, suggesting they were not fully sedated before the other chemicals were administered.

Documents released to The Republic by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Thursday show that the Arizona execution drugs - which were used last October to execute Jeffrey Landrigan and are expected to be used over the next two weeks to execute two more prisoners here - were labeled in import papers as drugs for use on animals.

The information was found on documents called "Form 701 Inquiry," an FDA document that must be filled out by the importer or import broker before the drug can pass through customs. On the documents, information that would identify the importer who filled out the form was redacted. Under federal statutes, filing false federal documents is a crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

The state Department of Corrections has consistently refused to discuss its execution drugs other than to say they were obtained lawfully. So far, state and federal courts have upheld that position.

Source: Arizona Republic, March 25, 2011

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