Tennessee: Judge hears testimony on execution drugs

A hearing is under way in Chancery Judge Claudia Bonnyman's court to decide whether the 3-drug cocktail used to execute Tennessee inmates violates the state's constitution.

10 days before Stephen Michael West was to be executed in a Nashville prison, the chancery court in October delayed his death after the convicted Knoxville murderer's lawyers brought to the court evidence that autopsies of executed inmates reveal that the 1st drug, sodium thiopental, did not cause the inmates to lose consciousness.

Dr. David Lubarsky, an anesthesiologist and Duke University professor, testified today that inmates are awake and conscious when they are given the other 2 drugs, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, which paralyze the person and stop the heart.

"It makes it very palatable to those observing," Lubarsky said. "...It's extremely painful and disturbing" to the inmate.

Lubarsky will continue his testimony at 1 p.m.

West is not in the courtroom.

The family of his victim is watching the hearing. They declined comment, but said they strongly support the death penalty.

Source: The Tennessean, November 18, 2010

Judge weighs medical testimony on lethal injection

A Nashville judge is considering whether Tennessee's lethal injection procedure is unconstitutionally cruel after hearing from medical experts about the effects of the drugs on inmates.

During 2 days of testimony, three medical witnesses testified in a hearing that will determine whether Stephen Michael West is executed later this month for the murders of a Union County woman and her teenage daughter.

West is challenging whether the state's procedure could cause pain because inmates may be awake during the process. His attorneys argue that would violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling by Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman could also affect another inmate scheduled for a December execution: Billy Ray Irick has joined West's challenge. The ruling will be automatically appealed.

Assistant Attorney General Mark Hudson said in closing arguments that the court should consider the standard for lethal injection challenges following the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of Kentucky's execution process.

The Tennessee Supreme Court set that standard as an "objectively intolerable risk of severe suffering or pain during the execution process" when it granted West a temporary stay until Nov. 30.

"This testimony taken all together does not establish or meet this objective standard that is required," Hudson said.

Medical examiner Dr. Feng Li testified on Friday that the level of sodium thiopental, the first drug used in the 3-drug cocktail, was enough to cause the inmates to lose consciousness.

He noted that the autopsies of 2 of the inmates were taken several hours after the executions. In the case of Phillip Workman, who was executed in 2007, the autopsy was done 10 days after the execution.

He said based on his medical knowledge, he believed that if the blood had been analyzed immediately after the execution, the concentration of the drug would be much higher.

"This reflects in that particular moment the levels of concentration in the body," he said, when describing toxicology results in autopsies.

Nevertheless, he said in all 3 cases the levels of the drugs found in the autopsies were within the ranges of toxic to lethal levels in his opinion.

Federal public defender Stephen Kissinger challenged Li's testimony, saying Li did not specialize in anesthesiology and questioned what resources and research he used to determine his opinion.

Kissinger presented two medical experts who testified on Thursday that the autopsies of 3 executed Tennessee inmates showed concentrations of the two of the drugs were too low to cause the intended effect.

Anesthesiologist Dr. David Lubarsky testified that levels of sodium thiopental in all 3 autopsies were too low to cause unconsciousness.

And another medical expert James Ramsey said the levels of potassium chloride, the final drug used in the execution that stops the heart from contracting, found in the autopsies were not enough to stop the heart.

"We know they weren't killed by potassium, we know they weren't even rendered unconscious by the sodium thiopental," Kissinger said in his closing arguments. "The only drug that was at lethal levels was the pancurium bromide, the drug that paralyzes the inmates, so that they can't breathe, so that they can't cry out and it suffocates them."

Neither West nor Irick were in court for the hearings, but the family of West's victims watched all the testimony. West was convicted in the 1986 stabbing deaths of Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines, in Union County.

Source: Associated Press, November 19, 2010

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