Some Lethal Injections May Have Been 'Excruciating’ [View All]

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-092706lethal,0,3945772.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Inmates executed by lethal injection in California may have been conscious when they were administered a drug that induces suffocation and an "excruciating'' experience comparable to drowning or strangulation, an anesthesiologist who has reviewed state execution logs testified today.

Mark Heath, a professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University Medical School, said the logs showed that some of those executed were still breathing several minutes after prison personnel administered pancuronium bromide, a paralytic agent and the second of three drugs used in lethal injections in California and three dozen other states.

"If someone is breathing like that, they may not be in a deep plane of anesthesia. They may not even be unconscious,'' Heath said on the second day of a hearing before U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on a challenge to California's lethal injection procedures by death row inmate Michael Morales.

His attorneys contend that the state procedure violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. As Heath was testifying, attorney Ginger Anders displayed a copy of a prison log of the execution of Robert Massey, which showed that Massey continued to breathe for four minutes after the pancuronium was administered