Broomstick wrote:In practice, there have been two consistent obstacles:
1) Former IV drug users who have shit veins, making it difficult to establish a working IV
2) People who are not trained medical personnel fucking up the administering of the cocktail
#1 should be avoided by a medical history and an exam, including an attempt to find a usable vein, in advance of the execution date. If an IV can not be established then an alternate means may be required and should be available.
#2 is a problem because the vast majority of medical personnel in the US will not participate in an execution for moral reasons, and of those who would be willing, most licensing agencies would revoke their licenses if they did do such a thing. Perhaps personnel who are expected to be part of these executions should get better training in setting up IV's.
The problem is not with the concept, or the cocktail. There are two obstacles to making it work in reality. Either fix those two problems, come up with a better method, or stop the government from killing people.
Funny you should bring this up, as in a slightly-related story, finding a suitable vein has been an issue for one
Romell Broom:
September 19, 2009
Prisoner in Ohio Wins a Stay Against a Second Execution Attempt
By BOB DRIEHAUS
CINCINNATI — An Ohio prisoner whose execution was halted after two hours on Tuesday because technicians were unable to find a usable vein that could be injected with lethal drugs won a stay Friday against another attempt to put him to death next week.
The stay, issued by Judge Gregory L. Frost of the Federal District Court in Columbus, expires on Sept. 28.
A hearing on a further stay has been scheduled for that day, but the one that Judge Frost granted Friday could mean a substantial delay at the very least. Defense lawyers and the office of Gov. Ted Strickland said Ohio required that a new execution date be approved by the State Supreme Court once a stay of execution is issued, whether by the state courts or the federal.
That process, said lawyers for the condemned prisoner, Romell Broom, 53, is likely to take months.
Tuesday’s postponement of Mr. Broom’s execution was ordered by Mr. Strickland after technicians at the state prison in Lucasville had tried for more than two hours to maintain an IV connection in order to inject him with lethal drugs. His lawyers argue that among other things, the pain he evidently experienced during that process constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
That was the first time an execution by lethal injection in the United States had failed and been rescheduled for another day.
The effort to execute Mr. Broom, convicted of the rape, abduction and murder of a 14-year-old girl, has drawn wide attention to Ohio’s death chamber.
Dr. Jonathan I. Groner, a professor of medicine at Ohio State University, cites what he calls the Hippocratic paradox: it is doctors who are best qualified to carry out executions by lethal injection, and yet, as medical organizations have periodically reminded them, their doing so is ethically proscribed.
The task of injecting a deadly cocktail of drugs instead falls on execution teams whose training, Dr. Groner said, does not adequately prepare them for prisoners who among other problems may be obese or have veins ravaged by intravenous drug abuse. (In a log reviewed by The Associated Press, Mr. Broom’s executioners attributed their trouble to his past IV drug abuse, use that he has denied.)
“The problem is there’s no Plan B,” said Dr. Groner, an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. “They have a group of individuals who have a certain skill set for inserting IVs. It’s a very low skill level, and some of the inmates are extremely challenging.”
In an affidavit filed Friday with Judge Frost’s court, Mr. Broom described multiple efforts on Tuesday, by people he identified as nurses, to establish an IV in his arms, legs and ankles, sometimes causing him to cry out in pain and leading him to help one of the executioners in the process, in hopes of hastening death.
In between those efforts, the execution team took three breaks. After the third, “I began to cry because I was in pain and my arms were swelling,” Mr. Broom said in the affidavit. “The nurses were placing needles in areas that were already bruised and swollen.”
Ohio’s lethal injection protocol has been modified several times since it was introduced in 1993. In one change, the prison warden now shakes and calls out to the condemned after anesthesia is injected, to establish that he is unconscious before the lethal drugs are administered.
While Ohio has come under heavy criticism for Tuesday’s events and for two ultimately successful but prolonged executions in the last three years, its procedures are similar to those of other states.
Like Ohio, all the other states now using lethal injection employ the same three-drug cocktail originally adopted by Oklahoma, and none have doctors actively involved, said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in Washington.
In North Carolina, executions have effectively been suspended while the courts wrangle with challenges to the attempt by the state, against the efforts of the North Carolina Medical Board, to allow doctors to assist in placing IVs and other duties.
Missouri employed a doctor, Alan R. Doerhoff, to participate actively in the execution process before a federal judge in 2006 barred him from doing so, citing his dyslexia as a risk to performing his duties, which included preparing the lethal drugs.
Other states allow doctors to certify that death has occurred, but none currently participate in placing IVs or administering the drugs, Mr. Dieter said.
In Ohio, officials refuse to disclose the professions of execution team members, citing a need to protect their anonymity. Julie Walburn, a spokeswoman for the department of corrections, said the official protocol did not call specifically for nurses or other medical professionals to be on the team, only for team members to be trained in IV use and other details of the execution process.
Several court cases have shown that the state’s 12-member execution teams typically comprise two emergency medical technicians and corrections officers trained in IV use and the effects of the drugs.
Asked to respond to accusations that the teams were not qualified, Ms. Walburn said, “We have every confidence in the skills and abilities of the execution team members to carry out their responsibilities in accordance with the law.”
But she said state officials were nonetheless discussing what qualifications were needed, what alternatives to the current training were available and whether the state might incorporate them.
