Tookie Williams Execution was botched
By Adam Tanner
SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - A Californian official admitted on
Tuesday that state prison guards had bungled the recent controversial
execution of former gang leader Stanley Williams, but denied that
lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general, spoke
at the start of a four-day federal court hearing into whether lethal
injection, the procedure used for executions in 37 U.S. states,
causes undue suffering.
Gillette cited the December 2005 failure to connect a back-up
intravenous line to the left arm of Williams,
former Crips gang leader from Los Angeles who garnered global
publicity after writing anti-gang books.
"Williams was a lesson well-learned that will not happen again,"
Gillette told Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose.
Guards typically attach two intravenous lines to condemned inmates,
one as a back-up to assure the continuous flow of chemicals that
anesthetize, paralyze and then kill. Witnesses saw the San Quentin
staff struggle to insert the IV into Williams but officials at the
time did not concede any problems had occurred.
"That's the only instance that we know of," Gillette told Reuters
during a court break. "That was the redundant arm ... (the IV) did
not work."
In court Gillette said California's mix of drugs to render
unconscious and then kill condemned inmates led to a "quick, painless
death."
Lawyers for condemned California killer Michael Morales presented
witnesses who had seen what they described as painful executions as
well as medical experts to support its contention that that lethal
injection is unconstitutional.
The California case is one of several nationwide in which courts are
reviewing lethal injection. Last week Florida executed a murderer who
had earlier won a last-minute U.S. Supreme Court reprieve for further
consideration of lethal injection. Federal courts in Arkansas,
Delaware and Ohio have also postponed executions for such reviews.
PAIN SO SEVERE?
"This case is not about the morality or the effectiveness or the
desirability of the death penalty -- that's a matter for the
legislature," Fogel said at the start of the day. "The issue is
California's implementation of lethal injection."
"The question is whether the degree of pain is so severe it raises
questions under the Eighth Amendment" (against cruel and unusual
punishment).
Morales, who has confessed to the 1983 torture, rape and murder of a
17-year-old girl, was spared execution in February after San Quentin
prison officials could not comply with the judge's order that two
anesthesiologists be present.
On Tuesday, Judge Fogel, who earlier this year made an unusual visit
to San Quentin's execution chamber, said his options in the case were
to approve or deny California's lethal penalty procedure or propose
conditions to the process.
California has 655 people on its condemned inmate list, some of them
there since the late 1970s. Their numbers are growing so steadily on
Death Row at San Quentin north of San Francisco that penal officials
are planning an expansion of the 154-year-old prison.
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