Death Penalty News

Idaho Gov. Brad Little waited less than one day to reject Idaho’s Commission of Pardons and Paroles’ 4-to-3 plea that nature, not man, decides when convicted murderer Gerald Pizzuto dies. No one on the commission minimized Pizzuto’s crimes, not the least of which were the brutal murders of Berta Herndon and her nephew, Del Herndon, in an Idaho County cabin north of McCall in 1985. But the commission majority was persuaded that executing a dying man would become a lurid spectacle, something Idaho’s conscience should not shoulder. After spending 35 years under the shadow of a death sentence and in solitary confinement, Pizzuto is a dying man. He suffers from terminal bladder cancer, COPD, Type 2 diabetes, and chronic and coronary artery disease. He has suffered two heart attacks. He is confined to a wheelchair and is on hospice care. Pizzuto has outlived a doctor’s prediction made in 2019 that he’d be dead within a year. “The commission also considered compelling evidence of Mr. Pizzuto...

When most people think of lethal injection, they think of a painless, clean medical procedure — but nothing could be further from the truth. Lethal injection has repeatedly revealed itself to be a grotesque human experiment, with correctional officials pretending to be doctors, using made-up doses of drugs never meant to kill. As a physician who has practiced in Oklahoma for more than two decades, I was appalled to read about yet another botched lethal injection execution in our state. We must end this pseudo-medical practice once and for all.   Oklahoma was the first state to invent and use lethal injection in 1977. The coroner who helped develop the protocol famously admitted that he was “was an expert in dead bodies but not an expert in getting them that way.” The legislator who first proposed this method claimed without medical evidence that it involved “no pain, no spasms, no smells or sounds”.  We now know how untrue these claims are. Last month, John Grant convulse...

“I don’t understand trying to kill somebody who is already dying,” says the sister of Idaho death-row prisoner Gerald Pizzuto. Gerald Pizzuto is near death, but it’s unclear whether the cancer or the state of Idaho will get to him first. For more than a year, the 65-year-old has been in hospice care on Idaho’s death row, suffering from advanced bladder tumors, along with Type 2 diabetes, and a variety of heart and lung diseases.  According to his defense team, he’s been prescribed 42 different drugs in the last year, and his medical records say he has “begun experiencing memory loss and mild disorientation associated with the death process.” But on Thursday, the Idaho attorney general’s office confirmed the state’s plan to execute him on June 2, for the 1985 murders of two gold prospectors in the mountains north of Boise. If it goes through as planned, this will be Idaho’s first execution in nine years. Given the likelihood that Pizzuto will soon die of natural causes, his case may...

Missouri executes Russell Bucklew despite concerns over rare medical condition A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for killing a man during a violent 1996 crime spree, despite concerns the inmate's rare medical condition would cause a gruesome lethal injection.  Russell Bucklew was executed at the state prison in Bonne Terre. It was Missouri's first execution since January 2017. Bucklew had twice previously been within hours of execution, only to have the U.S. Supreme Court grant last-minute reprieves over concerns that he might suffer during the execution process. He had a condition called cavernous hemangioma and had blood-filled tumors in his head, neck and throat. He breathed with help from a tracheostomy tube. His attorneys said in a clemency request to Governor Mike Parson that a throat tumor could burst, causing Bucklew to choke and die painfully and in violation of the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. Bucklew looked a...

In late January, Ohio’s newly-elected governor, Mike DeWine, granted a six-month reprieve to Warren Keith Henness. Recently, DeWine halted all executions in the state until the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is able to develop a new execution protocol approved by the courts. Ohio joins Pennsylvania and six other states with some sort of formal hold on executions. DeWine’s “moratorium” on executions comes in response to Dayton Federal Magistrate Judge Michael Merz’s opinion suggesting the state’s current 3-drug execution protocol is a combination of “waterboarding and a chemical fire.” “If Ohio executes Warren Henness under its present protocol, it will almost certainly subject him to severe pain and needless suffering ... enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” wrote Judge Merz. He did not stop Henness’ execution but De- Wine, who sponsored Ohio’s capital punishment law as a state senator in 1981 and later represented the state in death-penalty c...

At the coroner’s office in Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Mark Edgar stood over the body of Robert Van Hook. The deceased 58-year-old weighed 228 pounds; he wore blue pants, a white shirt, and identification tags around his ankles. Edgar, a professor of pathology at Emory University School of Medicine, had done countless autopsies over the years. But this would be the 1st time he examined the body of someone executed by the state.

The Lone Star State is confident it can kill Danny Bible. Earlier this month, the aging Houston serial killer filed a last-minute lawsuit arguing that his veins are so bad and his health problems so severe that he can't be put to death - or it'll turn into a painfully botched procedure. But the state of Texas begged to differ, touting its long history of successful executions. "Texas is the most prolific death-penalty state in the nation," the state wrote in a Friday afternoon court filing. "Bible provides no example of a Texas execution, performed under the current protocol, gone horribly awry because of vein failure." Officials say that a Florida killer's screams of "murderers!" during his execution were not caused by the drugs used for the lethal injection. The 66-year-old 4-time killer, who is set for execution on June 27, pointed to bloody botched procedures in other states. In February, a lethal injection team in Al...

Lawyers for Houston-area serial killer Danny Bible filed a civil rights suit Friday alleging the aging death row inmate is in such poor health that any attempts to execute him will end in a gruesome, botched procedure. The so-called "ice pick killer" has Parkinson's, bad veins and a slew of other medical conditions that raise the possibility of a prolonged and painful lethal injection process his lawyers argue could violate the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The 66-year-old is scheduled to die on June 27. "Texas will almost certainly join Alabama and Ohio and add itself to the unconscionable list of botched executions in America," his attorney Jeremy Schepers told the Chronicle. "Mr. Bible is an elderly, frail man who has been confined to a wheelchair for the last 15 years and his health is rapidly deteriorating," he continued. "Recent medical evaluations confirm that his veins are inaccessible and unsu...

Vernon Madison has spent decades on Alabama's death row. Now 67, Madison has suffered from strokes and dementia and his lawyers say he no longer recalls the crime that put him there: the 1985 killing of a police officer. His speech is slurred, he suffers from confusion, and once thought he was near release and talked of moving to Florida, according to his lawyers. This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to review the claims by Madison's defense team that executing someone in his condition would violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. "Killing a fragile man suffering from dementia is unnecessary and cruel," Madison's attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, said in January, when the justices stayed Madison's execution the night he was to receive a lethal injection. The U.S. death row population is aging, and that leaves courts increasingly likely to grapple with questions of when it becomes unconstit...

On the night of February 22, the executioners strapped Doyle Lee Hamm to the lethal injection gurney in Alabama’s execution chamber. Two men in scrubs began to work on each side, on his left and right legs and feet, sticking needles into his flesh and bones, pushing and pulling them out repeatedly, trying to find a usable peripheral vein, mashing and rolling the surrounding tissue for over thirty minutes, causing excruciating pain.  After working five different sites—two in the left ankle, two in the right calf, another in the right ankle—two other executioners entered the room, one carrying an ultrasound device. She lathered gel on his groin, while the other began inserting multiple needles into his groin and pelvis, with repeated jabbing movements, hitting deep into the retropubic area. Blood began gushing out and soaked the pad underneath him. Suddenly sharp pains jolted Doyle Hamm, and he began to pray the executioners would just get it over with so that he could die qui...