Two of the three drugs used in lethal injection are not administered in a way that reliably produces painless death for inmates, leaving at least some to die of suffocation and be conscious enough to realize it, according to a new analysis of executions in California and North Carolina.
Reviewing the cases of 41 inmates dating back to 1984, the researchers found that the dose of anesthesia given at the start of an execution varied widely and was often short of the amount needed to keep an inmate unconscious.
They also concluded that the chemical intended to induce cardiac arrest did not always stop prisoners’ hearts.
“The argument that’s always been given about lethal injection is that, in theory, a well-trained person could give it humanely,” said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law who has studied lethal injection for 15 years. “This casts doubt on even that.”
The study, published Monday in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine, provides badly needed scientific data for a debate that has been largely devoid of hard evidence regarding the medical underpinnings of lethal injection.
Twelve states have put executions on hold in large part because of concerns about the constitutionality of lethal injection. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Attorney General Jerry Brown intend to recommend reforms by May 15.
The study is “shedding light on a process that should have been examined a long time ago,” said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a Sacramento advocacy group that favors the death penalty.
Execution by injection originally was formulated in 1977 by an Oklahoma state legislator who opposed capital punishment and worked with the state medical examiner to devise a humane alternative to electric chairs and firing squads.
They developed a regimen of three powerful drugs – the sedative sodium thiopental to make the inmate unconscious, the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
Each was supposed to induce death on its own, and the combination was intended to provide redundancy. Though the regimen never was tested scientifically, it was widely adopted by other states and first used in Texas in 1982.
Thirty states rely on injection to carry out executions, and all but New Jersey use the three-drug regimen.
But acceptance of injection as a humane method of execution began to crumble. Inmates filed suit, arguing that it violated the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose put all California executions on hold last year after a challenge from San Quentin death-row inmate Michael Morales.
The new study focused on executions in California and North Carolina because those states had the most complete information available.
The authors included an anesthesiologist, a pharmacologist, a molecular biologist, a veterinarian, an attorney and a historian. Many have described themselves as death-penalty opponents.
Several of the researchers worked together on a 2005 study that found prisons routinely failed to administer enough anesthesia to keep inmates unconscious throughout their executions. They based their conclusions on the concentration of anesthesia measured in the bloodstream at post-execution autopsies.
In the new study, the researchers focused what they believed was a key problem: that inmates were given uniform amounts of anesthesia regardless of their body weight or other factors, such as their tolerance for barbiturates. North Carolina uses three grams of thiopental, while California requires five grams.
