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Thread: Thomas Douglas Arthur - Alabama Execution - May 26, 2017

  1. #121
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Nope! Arthur still has a lethal injection protocol appeal before the 11th Circuit.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  2. #122
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    I am not sure if the LI claim has been resolved in federal district court yet. I will see if I can find out from Judge Mark Fuller's clerks.

    The LI case is still pending in Judge Fuller's court according to the clerk's office.
    Last edited by Dave from Florida; 01-06-2014 at 01:32 PM.

  3. #123
    Weidmann1939
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    Mud and more mud! Perhaps opponents of Capital Punishment would fare better, if they slung manure and more manure!

  4. #124
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    It appears Alabama is not going to join the other active states in 2014. However, I believe Missouri will make up the difference and then some.

  5. #125
    Moderator MRBAM's Avatar
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    Dave, why don't you think they will get this resolved in 2014? What is the issue with resolving the issue?

  6. #126
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    I did some research and called the US District Court in Montgomery. Judge Fuller denied the states motion for summary judgment and dismissal. It is possible that Fuller will hold a bench trial over the issues. It had something to do with Alabama not following the protocol. After Fuller disposes of it, assuming the state wins there will be an appeal to the 11th Circuit. If Fuller rules in the next couple months, maybe the 11th Circuit will fast track it, brief it, have arguments and rule. Otherwise, it will go into next year.

    I read the opinion today from the 11th Circuit on the other issue. Arthur and Thomas Knight are perfect examples of a real
    screwed up death penalty system. The back and forth resentencings on both men have taken an unbelievable amount of litigation in the state and federal courts.
    Last edited by Dave from Florida; 01-06-2014 at 09:13 PM.

  7. #127
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State: Court order blocks release of Alabama death penalty information

    By Tim Lockette
    The Associated Press

    MONTGOMERY — The Alabama Department of Corrections has turned down requests from The Anniston Star and other news outlets for information about the manufacturers of drugs used in executions by lethal injection.

    A court order in the case of death row inmate Tommy Arthur prohibits the state from releasing any new information about death penalty procedures, the DOC declared in a statement sent to The Star at 4:48 p.m. Thursday.

    "This Confidentiality Order… prevents public disclosure, and in fact deems 'confidential information' a list of items, to include the Department's execution protocol and the information contained in it, and the identities of persons/entities currently or previously involved in executions," Prisons commissioner Kim Thomas said in the emailed statement.

    The Star, the Montgomery Advertiser and the Associated Press asked for the information after Rep. Lynn Greer, R-Rogersville, filed a bill in the Alabama Legislature that would make the names of people involved in executions, and the suppliers of drugs used in executions a state secret.

    "Today there is nothing under Alabama law that makes that information confidential," Greer said. Greer has repeatedly said he brought the bill at the request of the DOC, to protect the state's supply of lethal injection drugs.

    In recent years, death penalty states have struggled to keep up their supplies of drugs used for lethal injection. Drug manufacturers in Europe — where there's strong opposition to capital punishment — have stopped providing key drugs to states for executions.

    Some states have resorted to buying drugs from compounding pharmacies, which mix drugs in small batches. Some death row inmates — including three still-living Alabama inmates — have filed suits arguing that the use of experimental drug cocktails could cause pain during an execution, violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Tommy Arthur is one of those inmates. Sentenced to die for killing a Muscle Shoals man in a murder-for-hire scheme in the 1980s, Arthur was scheduled to die by lethal injection in 2012. He challenged the execution on the grounds that the state had only recently switched to a new lethal injection drug, pentobarbital.

    On Sept. 28, 2012, U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry Moorer issued a court order stating that both parties in the case had entered into a confidentiality agreement that prohibited them from releasing information about the state's execution protocol, current or past procedures and drugs used to carry out executions, and any testimony related to those procedures.

    Brian Corbett, a DOC spokesman, sent the court order along with the statement from denying The Star's request for documents. Attempts to reach Corbett for further comment were unsuccessful Thursday, as were attempts to reach Thomas Arthur's attorney, Suhana Han.

    Information that was already part of the public record at the time of the order is not covered by the order. Earlier this month, Corbett confirmed that the state's drug cocktail still consists of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, something revealed in an earlier court case.

    It's not clear whether the state has all or any of those drugs left. Oklahoma postponed an execution this week after state officials acknowledged they didn't have enough drugs on hand to carry out the death sentence.

    Alabama executed six men in 2011, the year the state changed its death penalty protocol to include pentobarbital. Since then, the state has executed only one person, Andrew Reid Lackey, who dropped his appeals and requested an execution date in 2013.

    http://www.thepiedmontjournal.com/vi...news_secondary

  8. #128
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Lawyer says Ala. can legally name execution drug suppliers, but state officials refuse

    A lawyer for a death-row inmate argued Friday that Alabama is free to disclose the suppliers of its lethal-injection drugs, and is wrong to cite her client's case as a reason not to do so.

    Suhana Han, who leads the defense team for death-row inmate Thomas Arthur, said in a statement that state corrections officials had no basis to cite a confidentiality order in the case as a reason for denying separate public-records requests seeking information on the suppliers filed by The Associated Press and other news media outlets.

    "Such information about the suppliers belongs to the state of Alabama, and the state is free to disclose that information as it sees fit," Han said.

    In denying the public-records requests Thursday, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas cited a confidentiality order in a 2011 lawsuit that challenged the state's lethal-injection drug protocol as potentially cruel and unusual punishment.

    Arthur's lawyers filed the suit after the state announced it was changing one of the drugs in its three-drug protocol. The two sides in 2012 agreed to a confidentiality agreement to not disclose certain information that could be revealed in discovery in the case including "all testimony, documents, or information related to prior executions of any Alabama death row inmate."

    Han said the order would only preclude lawyers from releasing the information they uncovered during the case.

    "That order only governs information produced in the litigation, and the state has refused to disclose any information about the suppliers of the lethal injection drugs in Mr. Arthur's case," Han said.

    A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections said the state stood by its interpretation.

    "Ms. Han is entitled to her interpretation of the order. The ADOC interprets it differently," spokesman Brian Corbett said.

    Alabama and other states that employ lethal injection for executions are fighting to keep the source of their drugs secret as a national scarcity has forced states to use substitutes or turn to compounding pharmacies to make the drugs.

    The Alabama prison system is seeking legislation that would make suppliers and manufacturers a state secret with names off-limits to both the public and the courts. The sponsor of the bill has said that the state needed the legislation so compounding pharmacies would be willing to sell the drugs, allowing the state to resume executions.

    The last execution in Alabama took place July 25. Prior to that, there had not been an execution since October 2011.

    The Alabama House of Representatives has passed the bill. A Senate Committee put an amendment on the bill saying that a judge could order the release of the information.

    The Department of Corrections has also declined to release any information about how much of the execution drugs it has on hand.

    The department announced in April 2011 that because of a national shortage of sodium thiopental, that it would begin using pentobarbital as the first of the three-drug protocol, followed by pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The pentobarbital is used to render an inmate unconscious, while the next two drugs stop the inmate's respiratory functions and heart.

    Arthur's lawyers argued that pentobarbital is slower to take effect than sodium thiopental and that inmates would feel the painful effects of the final two drugs. The state has disputed that claim, saying the 2,500 milligrams used is greater than the amount needed to induce a barbiturate coma and much greater than the dose that would be used for anesthesia in a surgical setting.

    http://www.correctionsone.com/alabam...icials-refuse/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  9. #129
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State adopts new execution drugs, seeks death date for 9 inmates

    MONTGOMERY — Alabama this week adopted a new drug protocol for executions by lethal injection and began seeking execution dates for nine inmates on death row.

    Those inmates saw their execution dates indefinitely postponed earlier this year, when state officials ran out of drugs used in executions.

    Several states have faced shortages of those drugs in recent years, largely because drug manufacturers in Europe — where there's substantial opposition to capital punishment — have refused to sell drugs to states for use in executions. In response to the shortage, several states have sought out new combinations of lethal injection drugs.

    Some death-row inmates have filed suits arguing that the use of those experimental drug combinations could lead to pain during executions, violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Tommy Arthur is one of those inmates. Arthur, sentenced to death for the murder-for-hire of a Muscle Shoals man in the 1980s, was originally scheduled for lethal injection in 2012. He filed suit on the grounds that the state had only recently switched to a new lethal injection drug, pentobarbital. Two other Alabama inmates have similar suits pending.

    State officials acknowledged in March that Alabama no longer had a supply of pentobarbital — leaving Alabama without the drugs it needed to carry out executions.

    In motions filed Thursday with the Alabama Supreme Court, state officials say they now have a new drug protocol for executions. Under the protocol, adopted Wednesday, inmates would be injected with midazolam hydrochloride, an anesthetic; rocuronium bromide to relax the muscles; and potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest.

    The drug combination is "virtually identical to Florida's newly-revised protocol which has been ruled constitutional," according to the state's motion.

    The protocol has been used for seven executions in Florida, the motion states.

    Midazolam, the first drug in the protocol, has been used in botched executions in other states this year. An Ohio execution in January took 25 minutes, with the inmate gasping for breath, according to accounts in the press. In May, an Oklahoma inmate died 43 minutes after first being lethally injected. Both executions used midazolam.

    Florida’s recent executions haven’t presented the same problems, said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group which studies the death penalty.

    Still, Dieter said, problems might be harder to spot under Florida’s drug protocol because the second drug in the sequence paralyzes the inmate.

    “It’s hard to tell when a paralytic is the second drug,” Dieter said. “They could be conscious or experiencing pain, but they can’t show that.”

    The state filed nine motions seeking execution dates for Arthur as well as inmates David Lee Roberts, Anthony Boyd, Christopher Eugene Brooks, Demetrius Frazier, Gregory Hunt, William Ernest Kuenzel, Robin Dee Myers and Christopher Lee Price.

    The motion in Arthur's case was the first to come to light Friday morning. The Star's attempts to reach Arthur's lawyer, Suhana Han, were not immediately successful Friday morning.

    Jennifer Ardis, a spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley, said the state was ready to carry out the executions.

    "Obviously, the decision to execute an inmate is a serious one, and the governor supports the legal process," Ardis said. "We have a new protocol and the Department of Corrections is ready to carry out an execution order."

    One Alabama death penalty opponent said she didn’t understand the drive to resume executions.

    “I’m disgusted,” said Esther Brown, an activist for Project Hope for Abolition of the Death Penalty. “I’m disgusted with our compulsion, our need, to kill. I just don’t understand it.”

    The state hasn’t executed an inmate since July 2013, when Andrew Reid Lackey died by lethal injection for the 2005 murder of an Athens man.

    http://www.annistonstar.com/news/art...1c5521f3f.html

  10. #130
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Attorney: Death penalty drugs would cause 'agony'

    By Brian Lyman
    The Montgomery Advertiser

    An attorney for an Alabama death row inmate said in a filing Friday that the state's new death penalty protocol would cause "agony" and "excruciating pain" to a condemned inmate, due to the unreliability of one of the drugs used.

    Last month, the Alabama Attorney General's office sought to set execution dates for nine individuals on the state's death row, saying in its motions that the Alabama Department of Corrections had developed a new death penalty protocol. Under the new procedure, the condemned would first be administered 500 milligrams of midazolam hydrochloride, a sedative; 600 milligrams of rocuronium bromide, a paralyzing drug and 240 milligram equivalents of potassium chloride, to stop the heart.

    However, Suhana Han, an attorney for Thomas Arthur, a death row inmate convicted in 1982 of a murder-for-hire scheme, wrote in a filing to the Alabama Supreme Court Friday that recent botched executions where midazolam hydrochloride was used suggest the drug is "utterly unreliable" as a sedative.

    "There is a high likelihood that midazolam will wear off before Mr. Arthur loses consciousness, such that Mr. Arthur will experience the excruciatingly painful effects of the second and third drugs," the filing said.

    The Attorney General's office did not have an immediate comment on the filing Friday evening.

    The protocol is similar to one carried out in Florida since last fall, and the Attorney General's office said in its filings that both the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the protocol. Midazolam hydrochloride has been present in varying doses in three botched executions this year, though its role in the complications that developed -- including gasping and choking by the condemned men -- is not entirely clear.

    Arthur sued to stop the state's earlier death penalty protocol in 2012, arguing in federal court that the sedative used in that procedure -- pentobarbitol -- would take too long to render him unconscious before the fatal drugs were administered. The state said earlier this year it had run out of its supply of pentobarbitol, causing a halt to executions in Alabama; it is not clear how or where the state obtained the drugs in the new protocol.

    Arthur's attorneys argued in their filing that midazolam has a "ceiling effect," meaning that a 500 mg dose would have no more of an effect than a smaller one. Oklahoma used 100 milligrams of the drug in executing Clayton Lockett last April; Lockett appeared to wake up after the fatal drugs were administered. Oklahoma officials now say a faulty IV hook-up was to blame.

    The filing also argued that the drug could cause Arthur to suffer a heart attack due to his current medical condition.

    "The State's new lethal injection protocol has not been examined by any court, and recent executions using midazolam have demonstrated that this drug is utterly unreliable as an anesthetic for purposes of Alabama's three-drug protocol," the filing said.

    Arthur's attorneys, citing the pending federal litigation, said the court should rule the state's attempt to set an execution date as premature.

    Alabama has used lethal injection as its primary method of execution since 2002. The state used sodium thiopental as its primary sedative until 2011, when manufacturer Hospira stopped making the drug in the United States. Most states with the death penalty have since struggled to find drugs that can be used to carry out executions.

    http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/...gony/16674417/

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