Lethal injection worries stir US death penalty debate

KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 28: As the mother of a convicted murderer, Linda Taylor feels the nationwide debate over the death penalty in both her conscience and her heart.

Less than six months ago, the Kansas City grandmother sat outside a prison cell and said good-bye to her 39-year-old son Michael, prepared to see him put to death with a dose of lethal drugs in Missouri's execution chamber.

''That was the worst time in our family's life. Waiting, praying,'' said Taylor. ''The crime he did was horrendous. But why do we kill people ... to show that killing people is wrong?.'' A late reprieve spared Michael Taylor, who pleaded guilty to the 1989 rape and murder of a Kansas City school girl, and he remains alive on the state's death row.

And though initially it seemed only a technical delay, all executions in Missouri are now blocked because of evidence that state executioners might be inadvertently causing inmates to feel undue pain when they are killed.

The revelations are contributing to a broad reexamination of the death penalty across the country. Indeed, a series of recent court rulings in several states, along with new concerns raised by doctors and lawyers about lethal injection -- the most-used method of execution in the United States -- has raised the debate to a new intensity.

Given the developments, some legal scholars speculate that the Supreme Court may ultimately reimpose a moratorium on capital punishment as it did in 1972. That ended in 1976 and currently 38 states have death penalty statutes on the books.

''We're in the middle of a slugfest,'' said New York University of Law School professor and capital punishment proponent Robert Blecker.

TIDE TURNING?

Recent polls show a majority of Americans, about 65 per cent, support capital punishment, a level relatively unchanged over the last few years, but significantly lower than the 80 per cent support level in the mid-1990s.

Americans are increasingly favouring life without parole for murderers, polls are showing, and the number of people sentenced to death has dropped 55 per cent from 1999.

''Sentiments are changing,'' said Death Penalty Information Center director Richard Dieter. ''The evidence is very strong.'' The advent of DNA testing that has proven innocent people have been wrongly convicted, along with evidence of inconsistent applications of the death penalty, are chief among the factors leading to fewer executions, according to Dieter.

But concerns about lethal injection are further feeding those doubts and forcing people who have considered lethal injection as an ethical, pain-free method of execution to evaluate anew how far public punishment should go.

The issue rose to the forefront last year when a British medical journal published research showing dozens of U.S. inmates had been given anaesthetic at lower levels than required for surgery and that guidelines in several states were flawed. Without proper anaesthesia, potassium chloride administered to stop the heart can cause excruciating pain.

The inmates could have been unable to show their suffering, the study found, because of the paralysing effect of another of the drugs commonly used in lethal injection executions, which typically take two to five minutes to kill the inmate.

''Some people (have been persuaded) that what appears to be a very painless death is as gruesome as the electric chair or the gas chamber,'' said David R. Dow, professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

COURT CONCERNS

Lawyers for death row inmates are increasingly using the concerns about pain to argue that lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Such appeals have delayed executions in several states, including Arkansas, California and Florida.

The fears gained further standing when the U.S. Supreme Court on June 12 said death row inmates could challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection as a civil rights violation.

Earlier this month, lethal injection fears led Virginia to use an electric chair to execute 27-year-old Brandon Hedrick because Hedrick feared injection might be a more painful way to die, according to his attorney.

Back in Missouri, U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan has ordered the state department of corrections to make a series of improvements to its execution protocol, including employing a board-certified anaesthesiologist to ensure that the drugs used in lethal injections were properly prepared.

The action came after the doctor who had been overseeing Missouri executions admitted he was dyslexic, often mixing up numbers, and after Taylor's attorneys discovered records showing doses of anaesthesia were half what they should have been for some executions, including the dose that awaited Taylor.

In response to the judge's order, Missouri has said it cannot find an anaesthesiologist willing to participate and plans to to appeal. The American Medical Association this month reminded doctors that it views participation in executions to be a violation of medical ethics.

''This is unprecedented. We've never had executions blocked to this extent,'' said Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Hauswirth.

Taylor and his family hope his execution will be permanently stayed. But for some, concerns about a painful death for convicted murderers remain irrelevant.

''So they suffer a little pain,'' said Gladys Wimberley of Winchester, Mo., who says she will not support a politician who opposes the death penalty. ''There are a lot of us out here who feel that way. If you commit anything as heinous as a murder, then you should die too.''

Reuters