Judges reexamine lethal injections for convicts

"If administered improperly, this combination of chemicals would cause an inmate to suffocate, while consciously experiencing the blinding pain of an injection of potassium chloride and a coronary arrest, while onlookers believe him to be unconscious and insensitive to any pain," says the brief.

It continues: "Yet all across the country, state lethal injection protocols fail to provide execution personnel the adequate training, appropriate procedures, and proper equipment necessary to administer lethal injection."

Although the Constitution does not require that state-sanctioned executions be painless, a lethal-injection execution botched in this way would qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, these lawyers say.

But the problem is, if the inmate is paralyzed and then dies, the necessary evidence to argue and win that case may well have died with the condemned prisoner, they add.

"Anyone who puts down an animal knows that there are other methods that are peaceful," says Bradley MacLean, a Nashville lawyer representing Mr. Abdur'Rahman.

Mr. MacLean says that the paralyzing agent used in the three-drug protocol, a chemical called Pavulon, is banned by 30 states - including Tennessee - for use in euthanasia of animals.

He says he is puzzled by the reluctance of state officials to address these concerns. He says unlike challenges to an inmate's death sentence, legal action seeking a change of procedure in carrying out a death sentence could ironically speed a client's execution rather than delay it.

But MacLean says states have so far resisted efforts to reform and modernize the lethal injection process.

"When we first brought our lethal injection action in 2002, most people who looked at what we were doing said there is no sense to bring this suit because they can change the protocols and eliminate all these problems in a matter of weeks," MacLean says. "We are now four years later and they haven't done a thing."

At least eight inmates have received stays of execution pending further litigation on the lethal injection issue, according to a report issued on Monday by Human Rights Watch. But the report adds that 10 other inmates have been denied stays and executed by lethal injection despite their concerns about the process.

That number rose to 11 last Friday after federal judges authorized the execution of Willie Brown in North Carolina. His execution had been temporarily delayed to investigate concerns that trained individuals should be present to monitor Mr. Brown's level of consciousness during the injection procedure.

According to a press report, the state agreed to have both a doctor and nurse use a "bispectral index monitor" to track Mr. Brown's brain activity and level of consciousness to ensure the execution wasn't unnecessarily painful.

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