FLORIDA - They butchered me back there. I was in a lot of pain

Minutes before his execution, Demps said technicians had cut him in the groin and leg and that he was "bleeding profusely." An observer from the State Attorney's Office saw "a large bore needle mark in the right groin..."

A state attorney discounted accusations that convicted killer Bennie Demps was ``butchered'' by his executioners, but the next man to die by lethal injection is likely to raise the question -- possibly to the Florida Supreme Court.

Though Florida switched from its controversial, mishap-prone electric chair to lethal injection in January to avoid constitutional questions about the way it dispenses death to the condemned, new questions arose after Demps launched into a seven-minute rant before he died Wednesday night. He said corrections officers -- trying to sink a needle into his arm -- caused ``a lot of pain."

"Whatever the method, the Department of Corrections is not qualified to do the job,'' said Michael Reiter, an attorney for courthouse shooter Thomas Provenzano, scheduled to die by lethal injection June 20.

The U.S. Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, though lethal injection has never been ruled unconstitutional since its debut in the United States in 1982.

Gov. Jeb Bush, visiting Miami to sign a health care bill, remained a staunch backer of the department and said Demps' execution went "according to protocol."

"When the execution took place, there was no cruel or unusual punishment," Bush said.

And Gainesville State Attorney Rod Smith said his office planned ``no further inquiries'' into Demps' death. Demps' attorney, George Schaefer, had asked Smith for an investigation, telling Smith that Demps' "complaints of abuse sounded sincere to me."

Condemned to die for the 1976 stabbing death of a fellow inmate, Demps called the execution a ``low-tech lynching by poison." He complained corrections officers trying to find a suitable vein cut him in the groin and leg, causing him to bleed "profusely" and to require sutures.

"They butchered me back there," Demps said. "This is not an execution, it is murder."

The execution team successfully inserted the first needle in Demps' left arm, a spokesman for the governor's office said, but had trouble finding a suitable vein in his right arm for the backup line. The team turned to Demps' groin and leg, but eventually gave up and went with a single line.

Smith said someone from his office watched Thursday morning as Gainesville Medical Examiner William Hamilton viewed Demps' body, noting a "large-bore needle mark" in Demps' right groin and a "small incision" inside the right ankle. Two puncture wounds were found on his right arm, and there was the mark of the IV in his left arm, Smith said.

"All procedures were conducted under the supervision of the warden of Florida State Prison and the director of health services for the Department of Corrections," Smith said. ``Based on the foregoing, this office finds no reason to further investigate the allegations of Mr.
Demps as conveyed by his attorney."

Demps, a Muslim, had requested that no autopsy be performed on his body for religious reasons.

The Department of Corrections' written protocol for executions calls for a 2nd intravenous line to be used in case the first round of chemicals does not kill the inmate.

Department spokesman C.J. Drake said the decision to go with a single line didn't violate the protocol.

"The warden supervises the process, and it's a judgment call for the warden," Drake said.

The department released a statement by its health services director, saying the execution was carried out ``in a professional manner."

"The inmate suffered no undue discomfort," Dr. David Thomas said.

The protocol, Thomas said, gives the department "professional discretion" to use a "minor surgical procedure" to locate veins.

The procedure, known as a "cutdown," involves cutting the skin and pulling out a vein when one can't be located with a needle.

Critics charge that because medical ethics prevent a doctor or nurse from participating in executions, the public should be allowed to see the procedure to determine if pain is involved. The department only opens the curtains to the death chamber after the inmate has been hooked up to the needles and tubing that deliver the chemicals.

"This is exactly one of the things that we had feared," said West Palm Beach Public Defender Steven Malone, who unsuccessfully argued in February on behalf of his client Terry Melvin Sims that the state was not prepared to conduct a lethal injection.

(source: Miami Herald)

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FLORIDA:

The execution of a Florida killer who complained he was "butchered" by his executioners is compelling evidence that the United States should abolish the death penalty, Amnesty International USA said.

Bennie Demps, 49, was put to death on Wednesday at Florida State Prison near Starke for the fatal stabbing of a fellow prisoner. In a deathbed diatribe he blasted prison officials for their handling of his execution by lethal injection.

Florida's administration of capital punishment has come under heavy fire in the past and has been the subject of numerous court challenges. The state switched to lethal injection after several bloody or fiery executions in the state's electric chair.

Demps was the 3rd Florida inmate to die by lethal injection since it was instituted this year.

"This case indicates ... that lethal injection is no less a human rights violation than electrocution," AIUSA executive director William Schulz said in a statement issued late Thursday. "All execution methods are gruesome and can go awry."

Florida prison officials have defended the execution, which was delayed for more than half an hour while medical personnel searched for a suitable vein to administer the lethal drugs.

"They butchered me back there. I was in a lot of pain," Demps told witnesses in the prison death chamber before executioners released the deadly dose.

His attorney, George Schaefer, said in a letter to local prosecutors that Demps complained the executioners had cut him in the groin and leg in their search for a vein.

Demps, who was serving a life sentence for a 1971 double shooting murder when he was sentenced to die in 1978 for the murder of Alfred Sturgis, was not pronounced dead until 6:53 p.m. EDT (2253 GMT). The execution had been scheduled for 6 p.m.

Amnesty International USA called for an independent investigation of the execution, including an autopsy. Demps, a Moslem, had requested that no autopsy be performed because of his religion and the local state attorneys office said it did not plan an investigation.

State officials said on Thursday the execution was carried out according to protocol and said they did not plan a review.

Florida was roundly criticized for the bloody execution of Allen Lee Davis in July 1999. Witnesses heard muffled screams from the death chamber and blood flowed from the inmates nose as a lethal jolt of electricity was applied.

In March 1997 flames shot from the head of inmate Pedro Medina, the 2nd time an electrocution produced fire in the electric chair known as "Old Sparky."

The Medina execution prompted a year-long halt to executions while courts reviewed whether using the electric chair violated the U.S. constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Although the courts ultimately upheld electrocution, Florida in January made lethal injection its primary method of execution with electrocution an option at the inmates request.

Amnesty International said 108 nations have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

"At a time when the United States is scrutinizing the administration of the death penalty, an incident like this highlights Amnesty International's belief that the death penalty is the ultimate human rights violation," AIUSA southern region director Ajamu Baraka said.

(source: Reuters)

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A trial judge must hear evidence in the appeal of death row inmate John Freeman, condemned for the 1986 murder of a Jacksonville man, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a 5-2 unsigned decision, Florida's high court ordered a trial judge to hold a hearing into Freeman's claims that his attorney was ineffective during his sentencing hearing.

Justice Leander Shaw, Justices Harry Lee Anstead, Barbara Pariente, R. Fred Lewis and Peggy Quince supported the majority opinion. Justice Charles Wells and Chief Justice Major Harding dissented.

Freeman is condemned for the murder of Leonard Collier, who caught Freeman burglarizing his home in November 1986. Freeman said Collier pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot him to keep him from escaping. The two struggled and Freeman got a hold of the gun. He hit Collier several times in the head and Collier died from the injuries.

In addition to the death sentence for Collier's murder, Freeman, 37, is serving life for the October 1986 murder of Alvin Epps.

(source: Associated Press)

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State Attorney Rod Smith said Thursday that his office will not investigate the surgical procedure performed on a convicted killer minutes before he was put to death Wednesday evening at Florida State Prison near Starke.

Inmate Bennie Demps' attorney, George Schaefer, asked for the investigation Wednesday after the inmate's desperate plea as he prepared to receive a lethal injection just before 7 p.m.

Minutes before his execution, Demps said technicians had cut him in the groin and leg and that he was "bleeding profusely."

"I was in a lot of pain," he said to the 32 witnesses at Florida State Prison.

But Smith denied the request and said the execution was "carried out as mandated by the governor."

Schaefer could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Smith said an observer from the State Attorney's Office saw "a large bore needle mark in the right groin and a small incision inside the right ankle" during an external exam of Demps' body Thursday. The observer also reported 2 additional puncture wounds in the right arm. The left arm still showed where a sodium chloride intravenous line had been inserted.

Demps, 49, was put to death after workers had a difficult time finding a sufficient vein on his body for a 2nd IV line.

Department of Corrections spokesman C.J. Drake said the execution followed protocol.

"The fact that it took a little while longer doesn't mean there was anything out of the ordinary," he said. "We need to do whatever we have to do to locate the primary and secondary veins. Protocol allows us to do it."

Drake said the 2nd vein technicians had trouble locating -- and resorted to a surgical procedure to reach -- was an alternate and was not used during the execution.

Dr. David Thomas, director of health services at DOC, said protocol in lethal injections was a "flexible document" giving technicians professional discretion to locate a suitable vein to inject the chemicals.

Doug Wallace, nursing coordinator of Shands at the University of Florida, said when Demps said he'd been cut in the groin, he was probably referring to a "femoral stick." Wallace called the procedure, where doctors cut into the skin by incision to find a vein in the groin area,
"normal to hospitals and very common" when doctors are unable to find a suitable vein for an IV.

"It's something that's very simple and that we deal with all the time," he said.

The execution, scheduled for 6 p.m., also was delayed while the prison waited for paperwork rejecting a final appeal from the U.S. Supreme Court, which arrived at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Demps, a Muslim, had asked not to have an invasive autopsy for religious reasons. The Alachua County Medical Examiner's office, which received Demps' body after the execution, performed an external exam Thursday, in accordance with Demps' request.

Medical Examiner William Hamilton said the cause of death was from injection of lethal toxins.

Medical examiner's officials said toxicology results will be completed in 8 to 10 weeks.

Complaints about the surgical procedure may be used in the death appeals of Thomas Provenzano, the next man scheduled to die by lethal injection, an appeals attorney said Thursday.

Michael Reiter, an attorney for Provenzano, who is scheduled to die June 20, said Demps' complaints call into question the ability of the DOC to carry out a constitutional execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court considered the question after Allen Lee ''Tiny'' Davis was executed in July, Reiter said. Davis' bloody execution and a promised review by the high court on the constitutionality of Florida's use of the electric chair sparked the Legislature to change the state's method of execution to a choice between lethal injection or electrocution.

"When Davis was executed, it spurred an action before the United States Supreme Court on the DOC's ineffectiveness in knowing or being trained on what to do," Reiter said. "Obviously, it has raised its ugly head again."

Demps was executed for the stabbing death of Alfred Sturgis, who was attacked in his cell by 3 inmates in 1976.

Demps was first on death row for the 1971 murders of R.N. Brinkworth and Celia Puhlick, who Demps fatally shot in a Lake County citrus grove. They were inspecting land when Demps happened upon them with a stolen safe.

One year after Demps was sent to death row, the Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional. Demps was one of 97 inmates in Florida taken off death row.

In July 1976, Florida's death law was upheld. 2 months later, on Sept. 6, 1976, Sturgis was stabbed to death at the state prison in Starke.

Demps was sentenced to death.

(source: Gainesville Sun)

Problems came with 2nd needle

After three tries, officials abandon attempts to insert a second line into Bennie Demps. That may have violated execution protocols.

By SHELBY OPPEL and JO BECKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 9, 2000

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TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday staunchly defended the controversial handling of Florida's latest lethal injection, insisting state corrections officials performed the procedure "according to the textbook."

"There was no botched nature to it at all," Bush said.

But newly released details about the struggle to insert a second intravenous needle into three-time convicted killer Bennie Demps show state officials may have violated their own written execution protocol.

That protocol says the medical technicians "shall complete" two intravenous lines into the condemned inmate. The governor's office says only one line was inserted, after technicians tried to insert a needle in at least four locations on Demps' body.

In the wake of Demps' execution, other questions surfaced among death penalty opponents about the qualifications of the medical technicians who attempted to insert the needle and about the highly secretive procedure that has developed in the six months since the state switched its method of execution to lethal injection.

Demps' final words -- a six-minute diatribe describing repeated attempts to insert the needle in his leg and groin -- has death row attorneys preparing to challenge lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.

Michael Reiter is the attorney for convicted murderer Thomas Provenzano, who is scheduled to die June 20. Citing the state's history of botched executions, Reiter said: "I don't think they have the proper training. I don't think they have the competence and they make a mess of things."

Demps' last request was to ask for an investigation into his execution. Alachua County State Attorney Rod Smith declined that request, made Thursday by Demps' attorney, concluding, "Mr. Demps was legally executed for a murder."

But Smith gave the most graphic indication yet of what happened to Demps in the hour before a curtain parted to allow witnesses to see him strapped to a gurney in the death chamber.

In a written statement, Smith said an observer from his office described five punctures in Demps' body -- confirming Demps' dying claims. The marks were a large-bore needle mark in Demps' right groin, a small incision inside his right ankle and two puncture wounds in his right arm. His left arm showed a mark from the intravenous needle that carried the fatal drugs into Demps' bloodstream.

Before dying, Demps asserted prison officials began attempts to insert needles at 5:40 p.m. and made a final cut in his leg at 6:20 p.m.

Justin Sayfie, a spokesman for Bush, gave this chronology Thursday about how the marks and puncture wounds appeared:

After the first intravenous needle was successfully inserted into Demps' left arm, officials attempted to insert a second needle into his right arm, his right groin and finally into his right ankle. Failing to find a vein in any of those three places, officials abandoned the effort and decided to use only one intravenous needle for the execution, Sayfie said.

Before dying, Demps complained that the process was painful and caused him to bleed "profusely."

"That's clearly torture," said Abe Bonowitz, director of the newly formed Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

C.J. Drake, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, disagreed.

"This guy spoke for up to seven minutes so it's hard to believe this guy was in that much pain," he said.

"But for the needles, it's not an invasive procedure."

When corrections officials abandoned the attempt to insert the second intravenous needle, they appeared to violate their own protocol, which states: "The designated members of the Execution Team shall complete the primary and alternate IV and the heart monitor setup(s)."

Demps was executed Wednesday for the slaying of another Florida State Prison inmate. He also had been convicted of killing two other people.

Bush, visiting Tampa on Thursday, said justice was served.

"It wasn't botched. They went according to protocol, and it worked. . . . There was no botched nature to it at all," the governor said. "It gives me no great joy, but he was not in pain. Lethal injection worked. And it was all done according to the textbook, so that's just the way it is."

The department, which has presided over three botched executions in the last nine years, has a history of not following execution protocol. After Allen "Tiny" Lee Davis died in the electric chair in a bloody spectacle last year, an attorney for Provenzano challenged the state's use of the electric chair.

The state Supreme Court rejected his claims, but scolded the department.

"Once again, we are troubled that there is an indication that DOC has not followed the protocol established for the appropriate functioning of the electric chair and carrying out of the death penalty," the July 1999 opinion read.

Reiter, who is representing Provenzano, said the issue will likely be raised in a challenge before the Florida Supreme Court, but he added that the court has allowed executions to continue in the past when it had knowledge that protocols were violated.

"The Florida Supreme Court is not going to abolish the death penalty merely because the department fails to follow protocol, even though the court should," he said. "My feeling is we're going to have to go to the U.S. Supreme Court and say, "Look, these people in Florida don't know what they're doing and they can't even follow their own rules.' "

Drake, the corrections spokesman, did not want to comment on the matter, saying "obviously this thing is headed for litigation."

In fact, much of the execution preparations are cloaked in secrecy, which makes it more difficult to mount a legal challenge. The intravenous needles are inserted out of view of the public. An independent witness from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement observes the procedure but does not file a written report or share his observations "unless he is compelled to do so in a legal proceeding," Drake said.

Drake would say only that "medically trained personnel" inserted the intravenous needles. The department's vaguely worded protocols say nothing about what qualifications, training or credentials are required to perform that procedure, and Drake refused to elaborate.

In Demps' case, Warden James Crosby said, "a surgical procedure" was performed in an attempt to find a suitable vein. Department officials would not say who performed that surgery, raising a new set of questions: On the one hand, the American Medical Association prohibits doctors from participating in executions. On the other, Reiter questioned whether a "surgical procedure" should be done by anyone other than a doctor.

Michael Radelet, a University of Florida professor who studies the death penalty, said Florida should study the role of medical personnel and the doctor who attended Demps' execution. "What were they doing in there?" he said. "Those physicians' presence is a clear violation of the ethical standards of the American Medical Association."

The Demps execution is the 17th report of a botched lethal injection since 1982, when the first inmate was put to death by needle in Texas, Radelet said.

Radelet could recall only one other lethal injection, in 1996 in Indiana, during which officials struggled to find a vein for as long as they did with Demps.

If Demps' claims are true, Radelet said, "Florida has set a new record for the most prolonged and botched lethal injection in the history of the world."

Most of the mistakes in other states have occurred because executioners are unable to find a good vein, as was the case with Demps. Others have resulted from improper administration of chemicals.

Even in a hospital or a doctor's office, experts say locating a vein and inserting an intravenous needle can be difficult.

Veins can be hard to find if a patient is dehydrated, since fluid is stored in the blood vessels. Fat or heavily muscled patients can pose problems. Even a deep tan can make skin tough and hard to penetrate.

And a man about to be put to death could pose another problem entirely.

Willa Fuller, a registered nurse with the Florida Nurses Association, described what appears to happen to some patients who fear needles.

"There's that unspoken "You're scared to death,' " she said, "and your veins will constrict."

Times staff writers Sydney P. Freedberg and Kyle Parks contributed to this report.