State death penalty halted

State death penalty halted

By Michael C. Bender

Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau

Saturday, December 16, 2006

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Jeb Bush halted capital punishment in Florida on Friday after a medical examiner said an inmate's prolonged execution was the result of lethal drugs injected into his flesh, instead of his veins.

Bush prohibited further death warrants from being signed for any of the state's 374 men on Death Row until an 11-member commission investigates whether the procedures inside the execution chamber constitute cruel and unusual punishment. It was unclear Friday how many inmates had exhausted their appeals and were awaiting a warrant.

The commission, which will be appointed by members of all three branches of state government, will be required to turn in its final report in March, well after Bush has stepped down and Gov.-elect Charlie Crist is sworn in.

"I look forward to reviewing the facts and information," Crist said in a statement, "and am certain the outcome will provide a clear understanding of what occurred."

What occurred, according to Dr. William Hamilton, the Alachua County medical examiner, was that prison officials pierced needles through the veins in both arms of Angel Nieves Diaz. The drugs then were absorbed into his tissue, instead of being injected straight into his bloodstream.

The result was a 34-minute execution Wednesday for Diaz, who proclaimed innocence with his final words. Lethal injections normally take about 15 minutes to take effect.

Immediately after his death, Department of Corrections officials said the inmate's existing liver condition prevented the drugs from being metabolized quickly. A department spokeswoman said Diaz needed a second injection, which was "not unanticipated."

The preliminary autopsy, meanwhile, showed chemicals caused a 12-inch burn on Diaz's right arm and an 11-inch burn on his left, Hamilton said. In Florida, a lethal injection cocktail includes one drug that serves as a painkiller, a second that causes paralysis and a third that causes cardiac arrest.

On Friday, Department of Corrections Secretary James McDonough said the second dose "was a pretty good medical call."

"The question it raises is, 'Was the condemned in pain?'" McDonough said. "No one can tell for sure, but there were no obvious indicators that there was pain."

But Diaz's attorney, Suzanne Keffer, said there was obvious pain and cited the autopsy and eyewitness accounts that described the convicted murderer as grimacing and gasping for air.

"The medical examiner's report confirms with us the fact the Department of Corrections was lying about what went wrong and confirmed what we have been saying for a long time: that a lethal injection does cause overwhelming pain and suffering," said Keffer, of the state's Capital Collateral Regional Counsel.

Hamilton said he would defer his opinion on whether there was pain and suffering until the autopsy is complete, which could take several weeks.

"More likely than not, the perforation of the veins occurred very early in this process," Hamilton said. "The autopsy findings were different than any other lethal injections."

McDonough said executioners, who wear protective suits to conceal their identity, insert the deadly needles into inmates.

A doctor and a physician's assistant are in the execution chamber, McDonough said, but are called on only in case of a medical emergency.

Such an emergency happened in 2000, when executioners could not find a vein for Benny Demps and had to perform a "cutdown," making an incision to insert an intravenous line that carried the lethal drugs.

Ken Goodman, director of the University of Miami bioethics program, said "no doctor or nurse should be involved in this process."

"I don't know who these people are doing this, but if they are licensed to practice medicine or nursing, they have abandoned their core values and are betraying their profession," Goodman said.

Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who has testified in several lethal injection cases, said botched injections are "a common problem."

"This problem has been going on for decades," she said. "What it says is that legalized forms of execution have to be conducted in such a way that those very requirements almost ensure disaster."