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Thread: Russell Earl Bucklew - Missouri Execution - October 1, 2019

  1. #21
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Stro07's Avatar
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    Today is Bucklew's 46th birthday.

    Rusty Bucklew awaits execution in Missouri: 'Are they gonna screw it up?'

    Rusty Bucklew did something terrible. In March 1996, he drove to the mobile home in southern Missouri where his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Pruitt was staying with her new partner, Michael Sanders. He shot Sanders dead and kidnapped Pruitt, leaving their four young children behind. Over five hours, he raped Pruitt, handcuffed her, and took her on a terrifying car journey, boasting that he would go down in a “blaze of glory”. The ride turned into a high-speed chase with police, which turned into a shootout. After being shot and wounded, Bucklew was arrested.

    On Wednesday, exactly 18 years and two months later, the state of Missouri is scheduled to exact a dreadful revenge. If his attorneys’ final appeals fail, like the ones that they have filed before, Bucklew will be killed by a lethal injection delivered one minute after midnight at a state prison in Bonne Terre, about 90 miles north-west from the trailer park where he killed Sanders.

    Now 45 years old, Bucklew is remorseful about the murder. “I shot the guy, and I killed him, and for that I am truly sorry,” he said over the phone from prison. He knows, however, that no apology can save him from the gurney and the government’s needle. Sometimes he even thinks that he is ready to die. “I’ve been doing time here for 18 years,” he said. “I’m tired, man.”

    But he hopes that it might be done quickly. Less than a month after the secrecy-veiled botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, the Missouri corrections authorities are likewise refusing to say precisely what they plan to use to kill Bucklew, or where they obtained it. “It scares me,” he said.

    Bucklew's execution is pending as Missouri faces a new legal challenge brought by the Guardian, Associated Press and the state's three largest local newspapers over the secrecy it has imposed on its lethal injection procedures. In a complaint lodged on Thursday with the circuit court of Cole County, covering the state capital Jefferson City, the news outlets argue that the refusal of the prison service to disclose the type, quality and source of the drugs it uses in executions is a violation of the first amendment right to public access to government practices.

    A week from execution day, Bucklew is taking narcotic pain medication three or four times a day. He's being held in almost total isolation, with any visits conducted through glass. For 10 days recently he was prevented from having any contact with the outside world other than his lawyers.

    Bucklew’s attorneys say that he has more reason than most to be fearful. Cavernous hemangioma, a medical condition with which he has suffered from birth, makes clumps of malformed blood vessels grow in his head. Seeking an injunction on the execution, his attorneys said in a court filing last week that a “massive” tumour had taken over much of Bucklew’s nose, throat and airway.

    “He haemorrhages on a regular basis, and sometimes experiences a major rupture with extensive bleeding,” they wrote. The attorneys argued that the condition could mean that the lethal injection does not circulate properly, causing him “excruciating, even tortuous pain” and inflicting a “cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth amendment”.

    He says he is already in constant discomfort. “It's like a toothache right now, and it will turn into like getting a fork stuck on a filling,” he said. “Then it will turn into a brain freeze, and then a throbbing.” The potential for one, final excruciating burst of pain fills him with dread. “I'm sick about it not working on me. I'm afraid that it's going to turn me into a vegetable, that I’d be brain dead. You saw what happened down in Oklahoma,” he said. “I'm the next guy up – am I gonna get all screwed up here? Are they gonna screw it up?”

    He also feels horrible about the final image with which his family could be left. “If I have to choke and gag, and all that, that’s going to be painful,” he said. “But what else is going to be painful is my brothers and my friend are going to have to watch that. How much pain is that going to put them through?”

    He would at least like to know exactly what the state plans to inject him with, and where it came from. Missouri’s execution protocol calls for Bucklew to be injected with pentobarbital, a barbiturate that is also used to euthanise animals, by a non-medical official. A medic will then check whether or not he is dead. If he is still alive, the non-medical official will then inject him with another dose.

    Since the Danish manufacturer of pentobarbital and its US licensee cut off supplies to American states that were using the drug for executions, authorities have been buying mixtures from secretive and makeshift compounding pharmacies that are not approved by federal regulators. They are dismissed by Bucklew, with perhaps understandable exaggeration, as “a meth cook in their backyard”. Missouri last year amended its rules on executions to classify these compounding pharmacies as part of its execution teams, meaning that their identities were shielded from public disclosure.

    In two scathing minority opinions on appeals from death-row inmates, Kermit Bye, an appeals court judge in Missouri, has sharply criticised the growing secrecy around executions. Describing transparency around the process as “fundamentally important” to analyses of an execution’s constitutionality, Bye accused Missouri of hiding “behind the hangman’s cloak”. He wrote in the first opinion: “The ‘pharmacy’ on which Missouri relies could be nothing more than a high school chemistry class.” Three US supreme court justices joined the dissent.

    Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described rules such as Missouri’s as a “distortion” of the principle of anonymity for executioners. “There is a fundamental principle at stake,” said Dieter. “Due process means that a person who is going to be killed by the state has the right to challenge that. And to do so, he needs to know how he is going to be killed … in a democracy, this is how the people are meant to check on what their government is doing.”

    Serious problems have emerged from these enforced shadows. When Eric Robert was executed with a dose of pentobarbital by South Dakota last October, witnesses said that his eyes stayed open and he gasped repeatedly while taking 20 minutes to die. An analysis later found that the drug, which was made to order by a compounding pharmacy, had been contaminated by fungus. When Michael Lee Wilson received a deadly dose of pentobarbital in Oklahoma in January, he responded with the now-notorious cry: “I feel my whole body burning.”

    Bucklew wants Missouri to be transparent about its supplier. Anything less amounts to “deceiving the public”, he said. “If you don't have nothing to hide, then you put it out in the open. It's that simple. So [if you don’t], you're hiding something. That’s the way I look at it … my experience is either: tell it the way it is, or you're a liar. And here the United States is a liar.”

    For Dieter, following Lockett’s ordeal in Oklahoma, “the burden has shifted to the states” to prove that such secrecy laws can be justified. He said: “They assured us that they could be trusted, and that everything was fine with these drugs. That did not turn out to be the case.”

    Morley Swingle, however, does not care. Now an attorney practising in Colorado, Swingle was the county prosecutor who took Bucklew to trial for murder. “I was a prosecutor for 30 years and he was the most evil person I ever prosecuted,” said Swingle. “He was a pure sociopath with no regard for other people.” Bucklew violently attacked Pruitt weeks before the day of the killing, Swingle pointed out, and later attacked her parents with a hammer after briefly escaping from the county jail three months after his arrest. “He was a homicidal Energiser Bunny,” said Swingle. “You could shoot him, you could jail him, but if he wanted to kill you he was still going to come after you if he could.”

    The former prosecutor dismisses the pleas from Bucklew’s lawyers. “It’s a bunch of hogwash to think that his medical condition is going to cause him any more pain than anybody else,” he claimed. “They’re going to give him poison and he’s going to die. It’s going to be that simple.” Swingle went on: “I don’t think you want to torture the person just because he tortured other people himself. But I think defence lawyers are paid to look for excuses, and they’re trying to find excuses to delay the execution, and it’s just silly.”

    Pruitt, who was just 21 when kidnapped by Bucklew, once promised that she would attend his execution to ensure that her face was the last thing he saw, said Swingle. Before she got that opportunity, however, she was shot dead in 2009 by her estranged husband, who promptly killed himself as well. “She had a horrible taste in men, or was incredibly unlucky,” said Swingle.

    It does not count for much, but Bucklew insists that he has changed. “I'm not the same person I was 18 years ago,” he said. Describing his 27-year-old self as a “dumb kid”, he says that he has since learned that “with age comes wisdom”. He is now into meditation, and says that he would do anything to get out: “I'll take intensive therapy, I’ll do whatever.” He worries constantly about his elderly parents, and wishes that he could help his father, who is 88, take care of his mother, who is 86 and recovering from surgery. He is anxious about what the execution may do to them. “It’s going to end up killing my mom and dad, and it’s going to be my fault,” he said. “I killed Michael Sanders, but I'm killing my mother and father, too.”

    Bucklew rises early for these final days. First he checks for any scheduled visits and phone calls. Then he may eat a honey bun with a cup of coffee, which he is not supposed to drink because of his anxiety. “I can’t help it,” he said. If he takes a stroll around the concrete-walled yard, this will be followed by the consumption of his medications – Tramadol and Neurontin for pain, and Klonopin and Tramadol for anxiety and related conditions. He frequently skips lunch, such as today’s offering of meat salad, and preferred to make his own meals before the prison staff revoked his crock-pot. “Is haggis good?” he asked, curious about British cuisine. “I might order that as my last meal. You never know.”

    He wishes that he could smoke one last time. “I'm like, if there’s any time for a person to have a cigarette, it is now,” he said. Instead, he spends most of his spare time reading, watching television and listening to music. His favourite book is The Poetic Edda, a landmark collection of Old Norse poetry. He watches hours upon hours of Real Housewives of Orange County, Ultimate Fighting Championship and NCIS on a television in his cell. And when it comes to music, he said, “I really dig Lorde – she kicks ass.”

    With that, he began playing A World Alone, the closing track to the teenage New Zealander’s debut album, Pure Heroine, down the telephone. “One day the blood won't flow so gladly,” she sings at one point. “One day we'll all get still.”

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...tion-interview

  2. #22
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Missouri inmate asking officials to record his execution

    BY DALLAS FRANKLIN AND KFOR-TV AND NBC NEWS

    MISSOURI (NBC News) – The next U.S. prisoner scheduled to be executed is asking Missouri prison officials to let a videographer record his lethal injection.

    Inmate Russell Bucklew claims his execution will be torture because of a birth defect.

    According to NBC News, Bucklew’s lawyers filed a motion in federal court Friday arguing a visual record of Wednesday’s execution should be considered evidence in his civil rights lawsuit against the state.

    “If Missouri officials are confident enough to execute Russell Bucklew, they should be confident enough to videotape it,” his lawyer, Cheryl Pilate, said in a statement. “It is time to raise the curtain on lethal injections.”

    The Missouri Attorney General’s office said Bucklew has no constitutional right to “create” evidence.

    “And the potential impact on the criminal justice system — including the real potential that private parties videotaping executions could lead us back to the days of executions as public spectacles — counsel against creating such a right,” the state said in court papers.

    Bucklew, 45, is set to be the first inmate put to death since the bungled April 29execution of Clayton Lockett in McAlester, Oklahoma.

    The convicted killer — dubbed a “homicidal Energizer bunny” by one prosecutor — has a congenital defect that causes malformed vessels to form in his head, face and throat, leading to hemorrhages, his lawyers say.

    They contend the large masses could block Missouri’s execution drug, pentobarbital, from circulating properly, causing excruciating pain in violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

    Prison officials have said when Lockett was executed, with a three-drug cocktail, a vein collapse stopped some of the chemicals from getting into his bloodstream.

    Recordings of execution are exceedingly rare, although the 2011 lethal injection of Andrew DeYoung was videotaped at the request of another death-row inmate challenging Georgia’s protocol.

    Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, who has studied execution methods, said one argument against a video is that the images could be leaked to the general public.

    The idea of recording an execution also runs counter to the secrecy that shrouds the process in many states. She noted that in Lockett’s case, his executioners closed the curtain to the death chamber as soon as things went wrong so the witnesses could not see what was happening.

    Many states are fighting hard to keep the names of their execution drug-suppliers — often controversial compounding pharmacies — under wraps.

    In court papers, Bucklew has argued that Missouri’s refusal to disclose where it got its drugs, combined with his unusual medical condition, make lethal injection too risky.

    Bucklew was sentenced to death for the 1996 shooting death of Michael Sanders, who had given refuge to his abused ex-girlfriend. He also kidnapped and raped the ex-girlfriend and shot at a police officer.

    Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, said video could be an important objective tool to evaluate executions.

    “I think the lethal injection needs to be examined much more closely and this would be good material evidence,” he said. “Doctors would view. Judges would view it. We need to have this debate. We need to know. You need some expert eyes on this.”

    http://kfor.com/2014/05/16/missouri-...his-execution/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #23
    Senior Member Member Slayer's Avatar
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    Do you guys think this will go ahead?

  4. #24
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    Lethal Injection Stay Denied for Inmate with Rare Birth Defect

    A federal judge denied a request to stay the execution of Missouri death row inmate Russell Bucklew on Monday. Bucklew’s lawyers had argued a rare birth defect would make his pending lethal injection extremely painful and therefore unconstitutional.

    Bucklew is a convicted murderer and rapist with a medical condition that causes tumors, which cause bleeding and difficulty breathing, to grow in his head and neck. As a result of the tumors, his lawyers say the lethal injection drugs will fail to circulate and Bucklew will end up choking to death. Bucklew reportedly asked that his execution be videotaped and used as evidence in a civil lawsuit in the state. NBC reports that request was also denied.

    His lawyers said in a statement issued Monday that they would “immediately appeal” the judges decision. Bucklew’s execution is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, May 21. His execution will be the first since the botched lethal injection in Oklahoma on April 29.

    “We will immediately appeal the denial of a stay of execution because the courts must fully consider Mr. Bucklew’s claim that he will die a prolonged tortuous death in violation of the Eighth Amendment during his execution,” his lawyers said in a statement.

    http://time.com/105495/lethal-inject...i-stay-denied/
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  5. #25
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Missouri governor refuses to stay execution despite injection controversy

    Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said Monday that he doesn't see any reason to halt the execution of an inmate whose attorneys claim he could suffer during the lethal injection because of a rare medical condition.

    Russell Bucklew, who was convicted of killing a southeast Missouri man during a crime spree in 1996, is scheduled to be the first person put to death in the US since a botched execution in Oklahoma last month. His injection is set for 12.01am Wednesday.

    "This guy committed very, very heinous crimes and while it's a difficult and challenging part of this job, we'll continue to move forward unless a court says otherwise," Nixon told the Associated Press in an interview.

    Bucklew, 46, has a congenital condition known as cavernous hemangioma that causes weakened and malformed blood vessels, as well as tumors in his nose and throat. His attorneys, in several court filings and interviews, have said he could experience a great amount of suffering during the execution process, and Bucklew told the AP in a phone interview last week that he is scared of what might happen.

    In an interview with the AP last Friday, Bucklew said his condition is so bad that he's on constant pain medication. Attorney Cheryl Pilate has said he also suffers from impaired circulation, which she said increases the risk that the execution drug may not work the way it is supposed to.

    Missouri has not indicated that it will be slowing down on executions in wake of the botched Oklahoma one. The Missouri supreme court on 9 May 9 set a 18 June execution date for another inmate, John Winfield.

    Governor Nixon, a Democrat who's a former four-term attorney general and a staunch supporter of the death penalty, said the Missouri Department of Corrections works "very hard to make sure this challenging responsibility is handled as humanely as possible".

    Former Cape Girardeau County prosecutor Morley Swingle, who called Bucklew "the most evil person I've ever prosecuted" during an interview last week, said the man's crime spree began in March 1996 after his girlfriend left him.

    Swingle said Bucklew was angry and threatened Stephanie Pruitt, prompting her and her two daughters to move in with Michael Sanders and his two sons in Cape Girardeau.

    Bucklew stole a car, guns and a knife from his police officer brother in Jefferson City and was able to track down Pruitt at Sanders' home on 21 March 1996. He shot and killed Sanders in front of Pruitt and the children.

    He handcuffed Pruitt, beat her with a pistol and drove to a secluded area, where he raped her. Later, after a state trooper spotted the car, Bucklew shot at the trooper but missed. Bucklew was grazed in the head and hospitalized.

    He later escaped from jail, hid in the home of Pruitt's mother and beat her with a hammer. She escaped and Bucklew was arrested a short time later. Pruitt later married and was killed by her husband in a murder-suicide in 2009.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ecrecy-bucklew
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #26
    Weidmann1939
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    I've just read an article in Atlantic Monthly about Bucklew's looming execution. (not worth posting; trust me) Suffice it to say "The elitist liberal/left lame biased national media" are determined to scream "BOTCHED EXECUTION!" even if Bucklew so much as sighs, blinks or twitches!
    Last edited by Weidmann1939; 05-19-2014 at 10:13 PM.

  7. #27
    Senior Member Member Slayer's Avatar
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    Just a thought but might Bucklew try to fake being in pain when his execution is carried out?

  8. #28
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    I wouldn't be surprised if he did so.

  9. #29
    Weidmann1939
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    I wouldn't think so. I believe most death row inmates want to leave this old world with at least some measure of their dignity in tact. I thought Clayton Lockett might have been sorely tempted to make a scene. In the event Mr. Lockett did not "put on a big show!" (In the sense of faking it, that is)

  10. #30
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Stro07's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Slayer View Post
    Just a thought but might Bucklew try to fake being in pain when his execution is carried out?
    In fact this already happened in Missouri. Timothy Johnson appeared to writhe in pain - BEFORE the lethal injection started.

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