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Thread: Arizona Capital Punishment News

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    Arizona Capital Punishment News

    Drug shortage may imperil executions in Arizona

    A worldwide shortage of a drug used in lethal-injection procedures could jeopardize future executions in Arizona.

    The shortage became evident last week during a federal court hearing in Ohio. There, an Arizona-based federal public defender told the court that Ohio had admitted it did not have enough of the drug, thiopental sodium, to carry out an execution later that week.

    According to court transcripts, attorney Dale Baich asked if the state would call off the execution if it did not find an ample supply. By the end of the day, the state had found an alternative source for the drug, and the execution was carried out as planned on Thursday.

    Baich declined comment.

    The shortage could affect Arizona as well, just as it is poised to resume executions after three years and a long court battle to establish a constitutionally acceptable method of lethal injection.

    Barrett Marson, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Corrections, said the department does not have a stockpile of the drug. According to the state's official execution-procedure manual, finalized in September, the drugs for execution are not ordered until the death warrant is received.

    On Thursday, the Arizona Supreme Court will discuss whether to issue a death warrant for convicted murderer Richard Lynn Bible, who raped and killed a 9-year-old girl in Flagstaff in 1988.

    If the warrant is approved, Bible would be scheduled for execution in late June.

    But he can't be executed without thiopental sodium.

    Dan Rosenberg, a spokesman for Chicago-based Hospira, the sole U.S. company that manufactures thiopental sodium, told The Arizona Republic that because of an unspecified "manufacturing issue," they cannot provide the drug. Rosenberg could say only that the company expected "the product to be available again in the third quarter," which means sometime between July 1 and September 30.

    Arizona carried out its last execution by lethal injection in May 2007, when it put to death Robert Comer, who murdered a man at an Apache Lake campground in 1987.

    Jeffrey Landrigan, who strangled a man in Phoenix in 1989, was scheduled to die Nov. 1, 2007, but his execution was stayed by the Arizona Supreme Court while the U.S. Supreme Court pondered whether the lethal-injection protocol in Kentucky constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

    The high court ultimately approved the Kentucky methodology in April 2008, but it also invited condemned inmates in other states to question the means of putting them to death.

    Landrigan became the Arizona test case in Maricopa County Superior Court, and another killer named Donald Beaty was the lead defendant in federal court.

    Death warrants for both men are pending before the Arizona Supreme Court and could similarly be affected by the drug shortage.

    Baich was supervisor of the federal public defenders who hammered out the current Arizona protocol with the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Both state and federal judges signed off on the Arizona protocol last year.

    The Ohio procedure depends entirely on thiopental, a barbiturate used as an anesthetic in Caesarean sections because it anesthetizes the mother without affecting the baby and in emergency-room intubations because it takes effect rapidly and wears off quickly.

    It is also referred to as sodium thiopental and sodium pentothal.

    According to a hospital medical director, who asked not to be identified because of the medical-ethics issues posed by lethal injection, available stores of thiopental have been further depleted because of a shortage of the drug propofol, the anesthetic that killed pop star Michael Jackson.

    Anesthesiologists can substitute one drug for another, but executioners cannot because their protocols have been hammered out through litigation.

    In Arizona, protocol calls for three drugs injected intravenously. Thiopental, the first, renders the condemned person unconscious and theoretically impervious to the other two drugs. The second, pancuronium bromide, paralyzes the defendant so that witnesses cannot see any signs of twitching or respiratory distress that could occur from barbiturate overdose. The third drug, potassium chloride, stops the heart.

    http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/05/16/20100516lethal-injection-arizona.html

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    State goes overseas for lethal injection drug

    Facing a nationwide shortage of a lethal injection drug, Arizona has taken an unusual step that other death penalty states may soon follow: get their supplies from another country.

    Such a move, experts say, raises questions about the effectiveness of the drug. But it also may further complicate executions in the 35 states that allow them, as inmates challenge the use of drugs not approved by federal inspectors for use in the U.S.

    Arizona said Tuesday that it got its sodium thiopental from Great Britain, the first time a state has acknowledged obtaining the drug from outside the United States since the shortage began slowing executions in the spring.

    "This drug came from a reputable place," Chief Deputy Attorney General Tim Nelson said. "There's all sorts of wild speculation that it came from a third-world country, and that's not accurate."

    Nelson said the state revealed the drug's origins to let the public know that its supply is trustworthy and to dispel rumors. However, he did not name the company that manufactured it.

    Without assurances of the drug's quality, many questions will be raised, including its effectiveness and how it should be handled, and would serve as a basis for lawsuits, said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University.

    "The impact could be huge," Denno said. "The source of the thiopental is critical."

    A federal judge in Arizona blocked the Tuesday execution of convicted killer Jeffrey Landrigan because the state obtained the drug from a previously unidentified overseas source. The judge questioned whether it might be unsafe.

    Landrigan's lawyers contend he could be suffocated painfully if the sodium thiopental doesn't render him unconscious. In lethal injections, sodium thiopental makes an inmate unconscious before a second drug paralyzes him and a third drug stops his heart.

    Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., the sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug, has blamed the shortage on unspecified problems with its raw-material suppliers and said new batches will not be available until January at the earliest.

    There are no FDA-approved overseas manufacturers of the drug.

    The limited supply has also directly affected executions in California, Kentucky, Ohio and Oklahoma, and may affect executions in Missouri, which says its supply of sodium thiopental expires in January.

    California officials say they acquired a dosage of 12 grams in September with a 2012 expiration date. But there was some dispute about the source. Hospira said its remaining supplies expire next year and California could only have obtained it elsewhere.

    The state prison system would not address the discrepancy. "The state obtained the sodium thiopental lawfully from within the United States," Terry Thornton, a corrections spokeswoman told The Associated Press.

    Ohio, which spends about $350 for the drug for each execution, ran out of the amount prescribed by state procedures just three days before a May 13 execution. The state obtained enough in time but won't say where.

    A few weeks ago, Kentucky's governor held off signing death warrants setting execution dates for two inmates because the state is almost out of sodium thiopental. The state's lone dose expired Oct. 1.

    Officials say they have tried unsuccessfully to get the drug from other states, and have gotten calls from states looking for it.

    In August, an Oklahoma judge delayed the execution of Jeffrey Matthews when the state tried to switch anesthetics after running out of its regular supply in August. Matthews was convicted of killing his 77-year-old great-uncle during a 1994 robbery.

    Oklahoma finally found enough sodium thiopental from another state, but the court-ordered delay continues.

    The controversy could end if Hospira resumes making the drug next year as indicated, or states could switch to another drug.

    At least 15 states, including Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Texas and Tennessee, might be able to switch drugs without a new law or administrative process, death penalty expert Megan McCracken said.

    In Arizona, officials say U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver's order should be lifted because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that Food and Drug Administration approval isn't necessary for the drugs to be used specifically for executions.

    The state filed a motion with the Supreme Court, and was awaiting word Tuesday on whether it can proceed.

    The delay, prosecutors say, is one reason the public has lost some faith in the criminal justice system.

    "We're 20 years in and we're not arguing over guilt or innocence," said interim Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, whose office prosecuted Landrigan in the 1989 killing of Chester Dyer during a robbery. "We have lawyers fighting lawyers."

    In recent years, lethal injections have run into high-profile problems, including botched executions.

    Ohio and Washington have switched from a three-drug method to a single, powerful dose of sodium thiopental. The change helps avoid litigation over pain that inmates could suffer from the second and third drugs if they haven't been knocked out.

    The switch doesn't affect the drug's administration, which has led to a number of fumbled executions, including a September 2009 procedure in Ohio in which the governor stopped an execution after two hours when officials couldn't find a usable vein.

    The issue will come down to whether an overseas version of sodium thiopental would be equivalent to what the FDA has approved here, said Ty Alper, associate director of the death penalty clinic at the University of California-Berkeley.

    "It really opens the door to Eighth Amendment challenges that go to the heart of whether executions work the way they're supposed to," he said, referring to the amendment about prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101026/...na_execution_6

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    Court ruling upholds Arizona's execution protocol

    Arizona's protocol for 3-drug injection executions has cleared another legal hurdle.

    A trial judge in Phoenix had upheld the state's protocol, and a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turns down 7 Arizona death-row inmates' appeal.

    The new ruling says the state's protocol abides by standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Kentucky's similar protocol.

    And the appeals court says the state appears to be following its protocol.

    (Source: The Associated Press)

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    Arizona says it has supply of drug for executions

    Arizona still has a supply of a sedative used during executions and plans to use it in two upcoming cases, despite growing concerns about the drug in other states, officials said Wednesday.

    Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental on Tuesday, but Arizona officials said Wednesday they hadn't been contacted by the agency.

    Texas announced it had abandoned use of sodium thiopental because of supply concerns and would use another drug instead.

    Arizona has enough of the sedative for at least three executions and plans to use it while executing Eric John King on March 28 and Daniel Wayne Cook on April 5, Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani said.

    The drug is the first of three administered during an execution.

    Arizona officials have discussed what to do if it runs out of the drug, and would likely switch to another as Texas did or to a one-drug execution method recently adopted by Ohio, Cattani said.

    Both options would be legal under Arizona law, but the state prefers to keep its present method because appeals courts have approved it.

    "We certainly have had discussions about what the options would be if the drug is no longer available," Cattani said. "And I think the options are fairly straightforward and along the lines of what these other states are doing."

    The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday denied two motions by King seeking to put his execution on hold, and it rejected a petition to review his case. One additional request for reconsideration is pending at the trial court.

    King, 47, was sentenced to death after he was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in a 1989 Phoenix convenience store robbery.

    On Wednesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stop Cook's execution, turning aside his arguments that the state's supply of sodium thiopental was possibly ineffective and could cause him pain.

    His attorneys have also filed last-minute appeals with the state Supreme Court, arguing Cook had post-traumatic stress disorder and organic brain damage and the trial court unjustly declined to hold a hearing about his recent diagnoses.

    DEA agents have not said exactly why they seized Georgia's drugs, except that there were questions about how it was imported into the U.S. Defense attorneys have claimed it came from a fly-by-night British supplier operating from the back of a driving school in a gritty London neighborhood.

    Arizona has said it legally obtained its supply of the drug from Great Britain but has not disclosed the company manufacturing it.

    State officials said anti-death penalty groups would likely pounce on the company and potentially cause it to stop making the drug.

    Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson cited a state law that says the identity of anybody who participates or performs ancillary functions in an execution are confidential.

    http://napavalleyregister.com/news/n...680651df0.html

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    Execution appeals focus on drug used

    Last-ditch efforts center on anesthetic concerns

    With two executions scheduled in Arizona within the next 16 days and two more looming in coming months, last-ditch motions for appeals and stays of execution are flying through state and federal courts, many of them centering on the importation and use of a drug used in the executions.

    Sodium thiopental, a short-acting anesthetic often used during executions, has been purchased by several states from Great Britain because it is no longer available in the U.S., raising a host of questions about the quality of the foreign-made drug and how it is being obtained.

    The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last week seized the sodium-thiopental supply of the Georgia Department of Corrections to verify whether it had been legally imported into the country.

    The seizure came after a Washington, D.C., attorney asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to look into whether Georgia had the proper DEA licenses to obtain the drug.

    On Wednesday, attorneys representing an Arizona death-row prisoner whose appeals have run out released a letter from British authorities claiming 12 adverse patient reactions, nearly half of them for ineffectiveness, to sodium thiopental from the same batches imported to carry out U.S. executions.

    Two executions are pending in Arizona:

    - Eric King, 47, is scheduled for execution March 29 for murdering a convenience-store clerk and a security guard during a robbery in Phoenix in December 1989. King's most recent motions with the Arizona Supreme Court claim that a surveillance tape used in trial was edited and not original and that his co-defendant (for whom charges were dropped) had recanted his testimony. His petition for clemency also raises issues about the quality of the state's sodium thiopental.

    - Daniel Wayne Cook, 49, is scheduled to die a week later, on April 5, for torturing, sodomizing and killing two restaurant co-workers in Lake Havasu City in 1987. On Wednesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down Cook's appeal, which was based on the legality of the thiopental that will be used to execute him. The court cited an October ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the Arizona execution of Jeffrey Landrigan. The ruling said prisoners do not have a say in the origin of the chemicals used to kill them. On Saturday, Cook's attorneys asked the 9th Circuit to reconsider.

    The Arizona Supreme Court also has been asked to set execution dates for two other inmates and will soon be approached for permission to execute a third:

    - Richard Bible, 49, snatched a 9-year-old girl off a bicycle in Flagstaff in 1988 and sexually assaulted her before killing her. On Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court denied a request to have further DNA testing done in his case, ruling that it would not likely have affected the outcome of his trial.

    - Donald Beaty, 56, abducted and murdered a 13-year-old newspaper-delivery girl in Tempe in 1984 while she was collecting money from clients on her delivery route. On Wednesday, Beaty's attorneys filed a motion with the Arizona Supreme Court asking that it not set an execution date because of new evidence that the imported sodium thiopental may not be efficient.

    - Thomas West, 51, robbed, beat, bound and gagged a man in a trailer in Tucson in 1987, then left the man to die. The Arizona Attorney General's Office is preparing to ask the court for a death warrant.

    Debate over drug

    The sodium-thiopental debate has continued in the U.S. and Europe since October, when then-Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told The Arizona Republic that the drugs that would be used to kill Landrigan came from Great Britain.

    Over the next few months, it was revealed that it was imported through a pharmaceutical supply house operating out of the back room of a driving school in London.

    In documents filed Wednesday, attorneys for Beaty state that the drug was manufactured in Austria by a German firm and sold to the supply house by a British pharmaceutical firm.

    Great Britain has subsequently tightened its export of sodium thiopental to keep American states from using it in executions, with Italy following suit.

    In February, attorneys for death-row prisoners in Arizona and two other states filed a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's decision not to regulate foreign thiopental imports.

    The attorneys also appealed to Holder to not help states obtain the drug while the lawsuit moves through court.

    Although the DEA seized thiopental supplies imported by the Georgia Department of Corrections, Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson said his agency has all requisite certifications for its supply.

    Beaty's motion, however, raises new questions about the efficacy of the sodium thiopental that Arizona and at least four other states have obtained from London's Dream Pharma. The motion contains affidavits from witnesses to two executions performed with British sodium thiopental who claim that the executed men's eyes did not close fully after the drug was administered and affidavits from experts who claim that their eyes should shut if the drug is working.

    Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Phoenix signed an affidavit claiming that Landrigan's eyes remained one-quarter to halfway open during his execution last fall.

    A Republic reporter who witnessed the execution wrote that Landrigan's eyes closed.

    But the reporter was standing at a right angle to Landrigan, while Baich was able to see Landrigan's full face.

    "The Landrigan execution was a publicly witnessed execution in which the inmate's level of consciousness was carefully monitored by a doctor," Assistant Arizona Attorney General Kent Cattani said. "State and federal courts have rejected challenges to Arizona's current execution protocol, and we are comfortable that the protocol adequately minimizes the possibility that an inmate will unnecessarily suffer during an execution."

    The Beaty filing also contains a letter from a British government health official saying, "Twelve adverse drug-reaction reports concerning sodium thiopental have been received by MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) during the past two years to date. Of these, five related to lack of efficacy."

    Baich responded: "This report, along with the adverse reaction in the last three executions where the drug was used, should make the government take a closer look at how the thiopental was obtained."

    The likelihood that any of these motions will succeed is slim. The courts have consistently ruled in favor of the government to let the executions go forward.

    Many states will still have to determine whether to change their methods of lethal injection in light of the sodium-thiopental shortage. Oklahoma and Ohio already have done so.

    "The inmates will litigate any approach you use," Cattani said.

    http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news...#ixzz1HNqPfquN

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    Death penalty procedures challenged in Ariz. court

    In Arizona's death chamber in the minutes just before an execution, inmates lay strapped to a table with a white sheet pulled up to their necks.

    Witnesses who are there partially to ensure that the inmates don't experience unnecessary pain don't see anything leading up to that point — it's just a man on a table about to be put to death with an injection they can't see.

    The veiled process and other procedures followed by the Arizona Department of Corrections are now being challenged in federal court. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake scheduled a trial in the matter for Oct. 11 and can rule that the department is violating inmates' constitutional rights by the way it conducts executions, or find that the department has acted properly.

    "All you see is a head sticking out from a sheet, and a guy sort of looks around, maybe makes a last statement and then closes his eyes," said Dale Baich, a federal public defender who has represented the most recent inmates executed in Arizona. "We want more transparency in the process and that's what we hope comes of this litigation."

    Baich is arguing that the corrections department is violating inmates' constitutional rights and deviating from execution protocol in five ways. Among them: using a new execution drug, using the groin area as the injection site and failing to leave injections uncovered during executions.

    He compared Arizona's sheet-cloaked process to some other states' procedures, during which witnesses see every step, including injections, he said.

    Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani, who will be arguing against Baich at the October trial, rejected his arguments and said the corrections officials themselves dictate protocol and can change it anytime they see fit.

    "An inmate can challenge a change but they have to show there's a high likelihood of significant pain or suffering because of the change," he said.

    Cattani said he sees no reason why execution witnesses should be able to view each step in the process.

    "I'm not sure I understand why there would be a need for insertion of the femoral vein (in the groin area) to be witnessed," Cattani said. "All of these executions have been publicly witnessed, the inmate has been conscious, the inmate is perfectly capable of explaining that he has suffered severe pain, and that simply has not been the case."

    Cattani said for an execution to violate an inmate's constitutional rights "there has to be more than a chance that something could go wrong."

    "Here we have the Department of Corrections carrying out very capably this serious responsibility, and it's not one they take lightly," he said.

    Corrections Director Charles Ryan declined to comment through department spokesman Bill Lamoreaux.

    The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco turned down a motion to delay Tuesday's execution of Thomas Paul West over the legal challenge to the department's procedures, ruling that he had failed to prove that there was a substantial risk that he would experience severe pain during the execution.

    But at a hearing the day before the execution, Judge Kim Wardlaw said the corrections department needs to follow protocol.

    A catheter in West's right arm was visible to witnesses because the sheet had been moved over, although it was still up to his neck and covering the injection to his femoral vein. At the four executions before that, including one on June 30, no injection was visible because the sheet covered everything but the head.

    In a prepared statement, Lamoreaux said West's sheet was pulled aside to show his arm injection "because it was the primary IV point and to be observed by the staff" and that in previous executions, the femoral vein had been the primary injection.

    He said inmates are treated in "a most humane and dignified manner" and that witnesses aren't allowed to watch every step to maintain the privacy of the team conducting the execution and to protect inmates' dignity.

    "The inmate is conscious and presumably capable of letting others know about any pain or discomfort," he wrote, adding that a drug is used to numb the injection site.

    In the five executions since October, two of the inmates declined to say last words to a roomful of witnesses just before they were put to death. The other three didn't say anything about experiencing pain, and one even cheered his favorite sports team just before his death.

    Although Arizona has executed five men in the last nine months, no new executions have been scheduled.

    Up to five inmates whose appeals are nearing their end in court could have their execution dates scheduled early next year. Those inmates include Robert Henry Moorman, who was serving a nine-year prison term for kidnapping back in 1984 when the state let him out on a 72-hour release to visit his adoptive mother at a nearby hotel.

    Moorman beat, stabbed and strangled the woman in their hotel room, then meticulously dismembered her body and threw the pieces away in various trash bins and sewers in Florence before he was re-arrested, charged, and sentenced to death.

    Daniel Wayne Cook also could be rescheduled for an execution early next year. He was scheduled to be executed April 5 for killing a man and a teenage boy in 1987 in Lake Havasu City after torturing and raping them for hours, but the U.S. Supreme Court put the execution on hold until it rules on Cook's claims of ineffective counsel during post-trial proceedings.

    That likely won't happen until the end of the year, and the earliest Cook's execution could be rescheduled is January.

    The state has executed 91 inmates since 1910; 28 of them have been put to death with lethal injection since the state began using that method in 1992.

    Altogether there are 128 inmates still on Arizona's death row. Because Arizona defendants facing the death penalty started getting two attorneys instead of just one in the mid-1990s, those convicted since then have more limited options to file appeals based on the quality of their legal team, Cattani said.

    "The theory is the more exhaustive the process in state court, the less likely it is there would be any type of reversal in federal court," he said. "And we are seeing fewer cases reversed."

    As a result, as many as 50 inmates could be scheduled for execution in the next few years, he said.

    October's trial won't delay or stop any of them, but could change some of the corrections department's practices.

    And if not, "We'll keep swinging," said public defender Baich.

    http://www.necn.com/07/24/11/Death-p...2a8abf433d7478

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    Justice a long time coming

    There's a whirlwind of violence, then a stretch of silence.

    John Bryant Jamison stayed conscious for 42 crushingly painful minutes. He was a doctor. He knew his gunshot wounds were fatal and that he could not be saved.

    Anthony Chaney had almost 17 years to think it over before he took his lethal injection for Jamison's murder.

    Jennifer Wilson lay dead for three weeks, her family and a legion of searchers unaware of her location or even if she was alive. Her killer, Richard Bible, was in a cell on Death Row for 21 years. His June execution was Coconino County's most recent.

    Todd Smith is still alive, awaiting his execution. He was sentenced to death in 1997 for the brutal murder of an elderly couple near Ashurst Lake. Online prison records show he'll be up for a standard inmate classification review in June 2012, some 15 years after he entered prison and 17 years after his crime.

    The wheels of justice turn slow when it comes to capital punishment. Arizona has executed 28 men since it lifted a 30-year moratorium on the death penalty in 1992. Only four of them were on Death Row for fewer than 10 years. Excluding those outliers, the average residence is about 19 years.

    This is nothing new to Arizona -- and nearly one in five Death Row inmates has been in prison for 20 years or more. Six have been awaiting execution for at least 25 years. One has been there for 31 years.

    Nor is there anything this state -- which has a relatively small Death Row population of 128 -- can do about the guarantees to appeals.

    Phoenix lawyer Steve Twist is a longtime advocate for victims' rights nationwide. He takes care to point out that advocates like himself don't want to just speed up executions; legitimate cases of innocence should always be given consideration. What he wants is to eliminate unnecessary delays.

    "The effect may be the same but that's really what we're trying to do," he said. "It's not a matter of getting people into the death chamber faster. It's a matter of doing it in a way that protects everyone's rights, including the victims'."

    AN ANGRY YOUNG SON

    Anthony Chaney attempted more than a dozen appeals and other maneuvers over the years he sat on Death Row for killing John Jamison.

    His victim was a family man and the chief of radiology at what later became Flagstaff Medical Center. He enrolled in the police academy in his mid-30s to be an unpaid reserve deputy.

    He was called in on busy days like Sept. 6, 1982 -- Labor Day -- to keep more eyes and ears on Flagstaff. His death in the line of duty was the sheriff's office's first since 1919, and only one other has followed, in 1983.

    While other deputies were working the county fair, Jamison was on regular patrol. He drove toward Chaney's campground near the Turkey Hills east of town to back up a deputy who wasn't responding to radio calls -- as it turned out, because Chaney, an ex-con on the run from some recent burglaries, and his accomplice girlfriend had disarmed him and handcuffed him to a tree at gunpoint. Jamison apparently had no idea what he was approaching and had no time to react to what has been called an ambush: a hail of gunfire from an AR-15 rifle, fired by Chaney when he came upon Jamison after cresting a hill on a rural dirt road.

    John Milton Jamison II -- "John" is a family name, and he was named for his grandfather -- was 13 when his father died. By the time Chaney was executed in 2000, the younger Jamison was, like his father, a police officer. He is currently a sergeant with the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, the same agency his father joined as a reservist.

    The younger John was deeply angry about his father's death at Chaney's hands. The first and last time John saw the man that he called an "animal" was on the day of his execution. He looked at him through the glass partition in the death chamber, and he felt like Chaney stared back. And he rued that he did not stop by his father's medical office, like he often did, in the days before his death. Grieved, he rode his bike to the mortuary while his father was being prepared for burial and asked to see his remains. He didn't until the funeral.

    But when Chaney was sentenced to death in 1983, it sounded good to the young man. He hated Chaney, and frankly, his feelings didn't change much over time. He reflects now with sadness for his father and a more matter-of-fact tone about Chaney.

    "I'm just glad I don't have to deal with it anymore," he said. "It's a load off, to say the least."

    There was a roller coaster of emotions: He'd get excited that the execution was around the corner, then deflate when it wasn't. He worried that Chaney would get out, or that his appeals for mercy would be granted, or that the death penalty would be abolished before he was executed. And as a police officer of nearly 20 years now, he understands how the system works.

    JENNIFER'S PINK RIBBON

    So does Billy Trimble.

    Trimble was one of the lead investigators on the Jennifer Wilson case. The now-retired Flagstaff Police Department detective said he knew from the very start that Richard Bible's case would take a long time.

    It was frustrating. He knew it involved a life, Bible's. But it also involved Jennifer's, a 9-year-old Yuma girl vacationing in Flagstaff in summer 1988. Bible kidnapped the girl as she rode her bike on Old Walnut Canyon Road, molested and bludgeoned her.

    Bible, who claimed to the end that he was not guilty, attempted at least 15 appeals and other delays. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his stay request the day before his execution.

    Bible's execution was the first and only one for Trimble, a veteran cop.

    "It's done now for me," he said. "A calm came over me when we walked out of that room that day, something I hadn't felt for a long time. Michael (Rice, the case's lead detective from the sheriff's office) and I turned to each other and almost at the same time said, 'We can retire now.'"

    They already had, years before, but in their minds, Bible needed to die before they could find closure.

    Then Trimble took the pink ribbon off his shirt and found Jennifer's mother. He'd had the ribbon since Bible's trial, and pinned it to the visor of every truck he'd owned since.

    "I gave the ribbon back that day," he said.

    ADVOCATE: OBSTRUCTIONISTS INFLUENCE SYSTEM

    The work continues for Twist, who became close with Wilson's parents when they joined him in the quest to further crime victims' rights. He said nobody wants a rush to judgment with human life.

    "That having been said, there is no rush to judgment in our system," he said.

    Courts need to be as attentive to victims as they are to defendants, which he said is not the case, and has been a failed part of his reform efforts.

    "Written into the Constitution of Arizona is the right to a speedy trial and also the right to a prompt and final conclusion of the case after the conviction and sentence. That right is similar to rights that are now established in other states to create a system that for victims that will be free from unreasonable delay," said Twist, a former chief assistant attorney general for Arizona and a law professor at Arizona State University. "Everyone understands that the constitutional right of the defendant to a lawyer that has time to prepare is important and needs to be protected but these cases, particularly Death Row cases, should not take decades to resolve, because those decades are not simply matters of academic or legal dispute among lawyers and judges and professionals. The delay is a deeply inflicted trauma on families who can't understand how it is that a just society can take so long to come to a final conclusion."

    Coconino County Attorney David Rozema has a similar sympathy for survivors.

    "The federal courts have created an appeals process that now typically lasts 20 years or more. This is excessive and wrong. The hardship that this delay causes to victims is immeasurable," he said. "Every new delay tactic and appeal creates new uncertainty and suffering for the victims. In the two capital cases I have been involved in, both of the surviving families needed the finality that only comes when the sentence is finally imposed. Until then, the black cloud of uncertainty and fear colors their world and prevents them from being able to truly move on."

    THOUGHTS FROM THE MIDDLE

    Twist attributed the delay in executions to anti-death penalty advocates, who he said turn to judges rather than the polls or lawmakers and use the law in an obstructionist way.

    "Ultimately their hope is, through a manipulation of the legal process for so long, that the public will grow weary of the length of time and the cost and not see any alternative and simply throw up their hands and abolish the death penalty," he said. "That's what they want."

    JoBeth Jamison, Dr. John Jamison's daughter, has complex, layered thoughts about the man that killed her father and the justice system that executed him. She can't say with certainty if she is for or against the death penalty, preferring to view it on a case-by-case basis.

    She doesn't say, either, that Chaney should have been spared. She believes in his guilt. She was 10 when her father died and she grew up with the specter.

    Her father was her hero, but upon his death, she knew nothing else. She's had Anthony Chaney in her life since she was a child, and still does as she writes a memoir about her experience as a victim of a Death Row killer's crimes.

    The wait itself didn't seem so bad for her, because it was installed in her life at an early age and life continued as normally as possible. But when the execution happened, it hit as hard as the murder.

    She did not attend or testify at Chaney's trial. She had "feelings by osmosis" -- she accepted how adults relayed things to her, and didn't form her own opinions until she had graduated college, moved to Europe and expanded her horizons.

    "What I was able to do in that time was develop my own perspective, get information that that I didn't have before and just really look at it from a knowledgeable perspective," said JoBeth, now working as a writer in Sedona, "as opposed to having every decision about it handed to me or beat into my head because it was just in my surroundings, and that's really what it was like here."

    She said this without bitterness, and does not deny anybody else their feelings about the murder. She admitted that she has felt conflicted about not taking a strong stance either way about Chaney's fate, and she admitted there was a certain mourning in putting to bed such a significant, yet painful, part of her life.

    She did not attend the execution with her brother John. She was sitting on her friend's porch in Tucson that day and felt an "angry wind" come from the direction of Florence. A few minutes later, she got a confirmation that it was done.

    For his part, John acknowledges Chaney's death was a long time coming -- "I felt like the phone was off the hook for a few years" -- and that executions could be done faster, but they have to be done right.

    "I wouldn't be a proponent of the death penalty if it wasn't thorough," he said.

    John has children of his own. His youngest is his only son, John Bryant II, not quite 3 years old. He will never meet his granddad and eventually, he'll learn how his grandfather died. But because John keeps his photo prominently displayed, his children will know him and hear that he was a kind and generous man.

    http://azdailysun.com/news/local/cri...#ixzz1WWuG046u

  8. #8
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Claim Arizona execution drug was illegally obtained grows

    PHOENIX, Ariz. – The Federal Public Defender's Office in Phoenix filed documents in U.S. District Court furthering allegations that the Arizona Department of Corrections repeatedly violated its own rules in executing death-row prisoners and knowingly obtained its execution drugs illegally.

    In July, Public Defender's Office attorneys sued Arizona on behalf of Thomas West, who was executed two days later, and five other death-row inmates. The lawsuit asks for an injunction to prevent the state from performing executions until it can prove it is in compliance with the established protocol for performing them.

    The state has asked the court to throw out the claim that its execution drugs were not legal because none of the named plaintiffs will actually be executed using those drugs.

    STORY: Arizona execution proceeds after Supreme Court lifts stay

    Monday's response by public defenders to that state motion details how the state Department of Corrections ignored advice to steer clear of a certain British drug exporter because it was not licensed to export the specific drugs used in executions. In fact, at the time, foreign sources of one of the drugs was not approved.

    A former U.S. Food and Drug Administration attorney who now advises companies on FDA procedures offered testimonial for the public defenders, saying the drugs were unapproved and illegally brought into the country, and that a local FDA official had advised the department to split the drugs into smaller shipments so that they would pass through U.S. customs with little or no scrutiny.

    The Arizona Republic first reported last year that the drugs used to kill an inmate in October 2010 had been imported from England. Several other states had imported drugs from the same pharmaceutical firm. State Department of Corrections officials and their counsel at the Arizona Attorney General's Office insisted the drugs had been obtained lawfully. But in April, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration began confiscating them in some states and ordering others — including Arizona — not to use the imported drugs they had in store.

    Monday's filing noted that medical personnel carrying out Arizona executions have repeatedly disregarded a written protocol approved by federal court stating that execution drugs are to be introduced into the condemned person's body through an arm catheter, not in a "central line" catheter that is surgically implanted in the person's groin.

    It also said the department kept its promise to conduct background checks of the medical team members.

    Monday's motion states that in September 2010, as the state prepared to execute murderer Jeffrey Landrigan, state Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan learned of the British pharmaceutical distributor from Corrections personnel in Arkansas. At issue was the drug sodium thiopental, which had become unavailable in the United States, but was a crucial sedative used for executions in Arizona and elsewhere.

    Ryan's former chief deputy, Charles Flanagan, contacted the distributor and wrote, "Anything and everything you can do to expedite the shipment is both necessary and appreciated."

    Flanagan also contacted the medical director of the department's usual supplier, who told him that the British company was a "gray" marketer, meaning the reputation of the distributor and the quality of the pharmaceuticals was questionable. She further informed Flanagan that the distributor was not licensed to export the drug to the U.S.

    Nonetheless, the filing alleges, Flanagan ordered the drugs and then asked his department's procurement officer to split a later shipment into smaller batches to qualify for "informal entry," meaning the drugs were less likely to be scrutinized.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...ona/51135508/1

  9. #9
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    Court filing details pay of Arizona executioner

    What's the going rate for putting someone to death in Arizona?

    The most recent executioner was paid $18,000 in cash for each of five executions between October 2010 and July 2011 and $12,000 for a sixth execution that was stayed at the last minute by the U.S. Supreme Court in April. In all, the doctor retained to perform the executions earned at least $102,000 during that period.

    The information was revealed late Thursday in court documents filed by the Federal Public Defender's Office in Phoenix, asking that the Arizona Supreme Court not issue a death warrant to permit the execution of Robert Charles Towery, who murdered a Paradise Valley man while robbing his house in 1991.

    The Public Defender's motion claims that the Arizona Department of Corrections has consistently failed to adhere to its federal-court-approved protocol for executions by lethal injection. Alleged lapses include failing to check the backgrounds of the medical team conducting the execution and injecting the drugs through IV lines inserted into the groin instead of an arm. Furthermore, the motion reiterates recent discoveries that the department did not legally obtain the drugs for the execution, but instead had them shipped from England in such a way as to minimize scrutiny by U.S. customs officials and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

    The allegations are similar to those in a motion filed this week in another federal case involving death-row inmates. That motion includes extensive depositions that the Public Defender's Office conducted with Corrections staff and the doctor who carried out the executions.

    That doctor's name is kept secret by state law, but the motion said that the doctor has since quit as executioner.

    http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...#ixzz1dUWoVK2V

  10. #10
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    Trial on Arizona Execution Practices Begins

    How Arizona conducts injection executions and whether death-row inmates' rights are being violated are the subjects of a trial beginning Monday in federal court in Phoenix.

    A suit filed on behalf of death-row inmates contends that the state's practices don't follow provisions of its own protocol for conducting executions. Those include where in his body an inmate is injected. Also at issue is the state's importing of an execution drug from Great Britain.

    The state contends that corrections officials set the protocol and can change it as they see fit.

    The trial is expected to last several days. The judge is expected to take the case under advisement at the end of the trial and issue a ruling later.

    http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news...s-apx-12052011

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