SQ execution team members say they get little lethal injection training

San Quentin execution team members say they get little lethal injection training


By Howard Mintz
Mercury News
By their own account, current and former members of San Quentin's execution team have little training or understanding of the rules or mixture of drugs used to put condemned murderers to death, documents released Monday show.

The documents, filed by lawyers for death row inmate Michael Morales in a federal court challenge to California's lethal injection procedure, reveal testimony given by execution team members who were questioned privately earlier this year in the legal battle over the state's execution method. Morales has challenged California's lethal injection protocol, arguing that it risks causing inmates undue pain during an execution and amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Morales' lawyers maintain the testimony from execution team members demonstrates a lack of training and safeguards in the state's lethal injection method.

Asked what kind of training they get before an execution, one former execution team member who has participated in seven executions replied: ``Training? We don't have training really.''

The execution team members' identities have been kept secret.

In another set of deposition testimony, former San Quentin warden Steven Ornoski, asked the definition of a ``successful execution,'' told Morales' lawyers it would be when ``the inmate ends up dead at the end of the process.''

California prison officials maintain that the state's lethal injection process does not expose inmates to pain and suffering, and that Morales failed to prove that the problems justify halting executions. In court papers filed earlier this month, the state said prison officials can improve the procedures, but that ``all reasonable measures are taken to ensure a constitutional execution.''

The execution team administers a fatal dose of three drugs to an inmate. The state has had trouble finding doctors willing to be present for executions because of ethical constraints on the medical profession, but the judge hearing the case has explored the possibility.

California's lethal injection process, the state argued, ``is a rational and humane procedure that poses no arbitary or wanton risk that plaintiff, or any other condemned inmate, will suffer unnecessary pain.''

Morales, on death row for the 1981 rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi, was on the verge of execution in February when he got a reprieve to pursue his lethal injection challenge.

San Jose U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who held an unprecedented hearing in September in the case, is expected to rule on Morales' claims in the coming weeks. Fogel now has thousands of pages of documents and hours of testimony to consider as he weighs the constitutionality of lethal injection.

California is one of a mounting number of states where death row inmates have challenged the progression of three drugs used in executions as cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier this month, the Kentucky Supreme Court rejected a similar legal challenge.

Fogel's ruling is ultimately expected to be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.