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| Herbert Smulls |
Missouri has executed a man convicted of killing a jewellery store owner during a 1991 robbery after the US supreme court denied last-minute appeals that in part challenged the drug used in the execution.
"After the United States supreme court vacated three separate stays of execution on January 29 2014, Herbert Smulls was executed for the 1991 murder of Stephen Honickman," said Chris Koster, the Missouri attorney general.
Smulls, 56, was pronounced dead at 10.20pm local time at a state prison in Bonne Terre after receiving a lethal dose of pentobarbital, the corrections department said.
Smulls did not have any final words. The
process was brief, Smulls mouthed a few words to the two witnesses there
for him, who were not identified, then breathed heavily twice and shut
his eyes for good. He showed no outward signs of distress.
He was pronounced dead at 10:20 p.m., nine minutes after the process began.
The supreme court on Wednesday lifted a temporary stay of execution for Smulls, denying last-minute appeals. The top court late on Wednesday also vacated a stay from the US court of appeals.
Lawyers for Smulls sought another stay late on Wednesday but Missouri went ahead with the execution before the midnight expiration of the state's death warrant.
Lawyers for Smulls had sought to block his execution on multiple grounds, arguing in part that the compounded pentobarbital drug Missouri used to kill him may not be as pure and as potent as it should be, which could cause undue suffering.
Missouri and several other states have turned to compounding pharmacies, which are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration, to acquire drugs for executions after an increasing number of pharmaceutical manufacturers objected to their drugs being used in capital punishment.
The increasing use of compounded drugs and untested drug mixes has brought renewed debate over the death penalty in the United States. In Oklahoma an inmate said he felt burning through his body when the lethal drugs were injected during an execution in early January. Later in the month an Ohio man gasped and convulsed during his execution with a two-drug mix never before used in the United States.
Smulls becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
Missouri and the 71st overall since the state resumed capital punishment in
1989. Only Texas (509), Oklahma (110), Virginia (110), and Florida (82) have
executed more individuals in the USA since the death penalty was re-legalized
on July 2, 1976.
Smulls becomes the 6th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA
and the 1365th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
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Sources: The Guardian, The Associated Press, Rick Halperin, January 30, 2014
Secrecy Behind Executions
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, JAN. 29, 2014
It is bad enough that the death penalty is barbaric, racist and arbitrary in its application, but it is also becoming less transparent as the dwindling number of death-penalty states work to hide the means by which they kill people.
The increased secrecy around lethal-injection drug protocols is only the latest tactic of pro-death-penalty legislators and corrections officials around the country. In Missouri, this secrecy was
upheld last week by a federal appeals court, which denied a condemned inmate’s constitutional claim that he is entitled to basic information about the drugs that would be used to put him to death.
Herbert Smulls was
executed late Wednesday for the 1991 murder of a jewelry-store owner. Missouri refused to name the pharmacy or pharmacies involved in producing the execution drugs.
Missouri’s secrecy, along with new legislation in states such as Georgia and Tennessee, is a response to a mounting “crisis” in death-penalty states: Because many drug manufacturers now refuse to supply drugs for use in executions, states are scrambling to replenish their stocks. This often means turning to
compounding pharmacies, which exist in a largely unregulated world.
In 2011, the Drug Enforcement Administration
seized Georgia’s supply of one lethal-injection drug after concerns that it had been illegally imported from Britain. And last fall, Louisiana officials sought to buy drugs from an Oklahoma pharmacy, the Apothecary Shoppe, which
was not licensed to provide drugs in Louisiana.
There have been multiple reports of previously untested drug combinations leading to botched executions, which is a polite way of saying the condemned person suffered greatly while being put to death. (On Jan. 16, an Ohio man, Dennis McGuire,
appeared to gasp and choke after being administered a new combination of lethal-injection drugs.) States should simply admit that they don’t really know how these drug protocols will work, but instead they have tried to hide almost all information about the drugs and who makes them — increasingly through legislation.
Some courts have had little patience for this behavior. In July, a Georgia judge issued a last-minute stay of execution to one inmate, reasoning that the state’s secrecy law “
makes it impossible” to show that the drug protocol violates the Eighth Amendment.
But, on Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
ruled that Mr. Smulls had no constitutional claim against Missouri’s practice because he had not demonstrated that the “risk of severe pain” from the state’s intended drug protocol would be substantially greater than a readily available alternative. As the dissent argued, this “places an absurd burden on death row inmates,” who must identify “a readily available alternative method for their own executions,” even though the state won’t let them see the method it plans to use.
Meanwhile, Missouri and other states race to execute inmates using new and untested drug protocols developed on the fly and under a cowardly shroud of secrecy. Mr. Smulls was the third inmate executed in Missouri since November. In some states, lawmakers have even proposed
reintroducing older execution methods, such as the firing squad and electrocution, so as to avoid the escalating legal battles over lethal injection.
In the end, the argument over what is the most “humane” way to kill someone only obscures the larger point, which is that, in the 21st century, the United States has no business putting people to death by any means. Public support for capital punishment has reached a 40-year low, and virtually all other Western societies have rejected it. It will end here, too, but not until this despicable practice is dragged out into the open for all to see.
