Bill to make electrocution fallback method of execution stalls in Va. Senate
RICHMOND, Va. - A Senate panel on Friday defeated a House proposal that would have made electrocution the default method of execution if one of the chemicals used for lethal injection is not available.
The Senate Committee for Rehabilitation and Social Services did not vote on the measure, instead carrying it over to the 2015 session.
The move comes one day after the Virginia Department of Corrections announced that it has added a new drug to the list of chemicals for use in lethal injections.
The new drug - the sedative midazolam — is one of the chemicals recently used in an Ohio execution that prompted a lawsuit. The department has had this drug in stock since last year, according to pharmacy records obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The chemical will serve as an alternative first drug in Virginia's three-drug protocol.
The department announced earlier this month that its supply of previously approved sedatives had either expired or was no longer available due to a shortage of chemicals used to sedate the inmate before execution.
Del. Jackson H. Miller, R-Manassas, had introduced House Bill 1052 to ensure executions could still be carried out by electrocution if the drugs are not available.
Miller acknowledged Friday that the Department of Corrections had added a new drug to its protocol, but said that it could face the same problem when the state's supply of midazolam expires in 2015.
"It'll be a matter of time that the very well funded and organized groups that are fighting the use of death penalty will get the manufacturer of this new approved drug to say they are no longer going to sell it to the Department of Corrections," Miller said.
"If anything is like the past, that manufacturer will buckle to protest."
Del. Scott A. Surovell, D-Fairfax, said that he is glad to see that Virginia will not be the only state that mandates the electric chair. But he said he remains "dumbfounded as to why the department requested this legislation" without disclosing that it had secured alternate lethal injection drugs that were being evaluated for implementation.
"It appears the Department of Corrections was attempting to mandate electrocutions without giving the legislature full information about a very serious issue," Surovell said Friday. "While the department has a duty to implement the law, it is not their job to advocate for or against a specific method of executing human beings," he said.
Surovell had sponsored legislation that would have done away with electrocution as a means of execution in Virginia. A House subcommittee defeated the measure earlier this month.
But Lisa M. Kinney, spokeswoman for the DOC, said in an email Friday that "the Department did not take a position on the bill."
Kinney also said that while the newly approved drug was used recently in the Ohio execution of convicted murderer Dennis McGuire — which lasted 24 minutes in an experimental two-drug procedure — Virginia will not stray from its three-drug protocol.
"Virginia's three-drug protocol is akin to Florida's, where the protocol is midazolam (a sedative), vecuronium bromide (a muscle relaxer), and potassium chloride (a drug that induces a heart attack.) Florida has used this three-drug protocol four times, starting with a lethal injection on Oct. 15," Kinney said.
Of the drugs the department has in stock, the midazolam expires at the end of May, 2015, the rocuronium at the end of March, 2015; and the potassium chloride expires at the end of June, 2015.
There are no executions currently scheduled in Virginia, Kinney said.
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