Alabama Cancels Cancer Surgery, Sets Execution Date for Terminally Ill Prisoner

Alabama has set an exe­cu­tion date for Doyle Lee Hamm (pic­tured), a 60-year-old man with ter­mi­nal cra­nial and lym­phat­ic can­cer that his lawyer says has ren­dered his veins unus­able for lethal injec­tion. Hamm has received radi­a­tion and chemother­a­py, and was sched­uled for surgery to remove a can­cer­ous lesion on December 13, but Alabama prison offi­cials can­celled the surgery and instead informed Hamm that a death war­rant had been issued sched­ul­ing his exe­cu­tion for February 22, 2018. 

In September, Hamm’s attor­ney, Bernard Harcourt, asked anes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr. Mark Heath to exam­ine Hamm to deter­mine whether his veins would be suit­able for the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Dr. Heath found that Hamm has vir­tu­al­ly ​“no acces­si­ble veins” in his arms and legs, and that his lym­phat­ic can­cer would com­pli­cate any attempts at the already chal­leng­ing pro­ce­dure of obtain­ing cen­tral vein access. Heath con­clud­ed, ​“the state is not equipped to achieve venous access in Mr. Hamm’s case.” 

In a com­men­tary in The New York Times, Harcourt wrote that Hamm ​“will suf­fer an ago­niz­ing, bloody, and painful death” if prison offi­cials pro­ceed with the exe­cu­tion as planned. ​“Our jus­tice is so engrossed with how we kill that it does not even stop to ques­tion the human­i­ty of exe­cut­ing a frail, ter­mi­nal­ly ill pris­on­er,” Harcourt wrote. ​“Mr. Hamm’s seri­ous and dete­ri­o­rat­ing med­ical con­di­tion pos­es an unac­cept­able risk that he will expe­ri­ence significant pain.” 

Andrew Cohen of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in a December 15 com­men­tary that Hamm’s case ​“has come to sym­bol­ize the injus­tice of [Alabama’s death-penal­ty] sys­tem. The idea that exe­cu­tion­ers want to make sure they kill Hamm before he dies of can­cer, the fact that it is like­ly the lethal injec­tion itself will cause him ​‘need­less pain’ before he dies, may be abhor­rent but it’s entire­ly con­sis­tent with the way state offi­cials have han­dled Hamm’s case for years.” 

When Hamm was sen­tenced to death in September 1987, his jury did not unan­i­mous­ly agree on his sen­tence, but Alabama law per­mit­ted the tri­al judge to impose a death sen­tence based upon a jury’s non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion. At that time, Alabama was one of only three states to per­mit that prac­tice; and now it is the only state to do so. 

Cohen wrote that Hamm’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights ​“were ignored in vir­tu­al­ly every way” dur­ing the tri­al. ​“Witnesses changed their sto­ries, ulti­mate­ly tes­ti­fy­ing against him only after they were charged as co-defen­dants and made sweet­heart plea deals. His tri­al lawyer did a mis­er­able job dur­ing the mit­i­ga­tion phase, fail­ing utter­ly to give jurors a fair sense of the intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, or per­haps brain dam­age, from which Hamm has suf­fered his whole life.” During state post-con­vic­tion review of Hamm’s case, the tri­al court denied his appeal by adopt­ing ver­ba­tim an order writ­ten by the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office, with­out even remov­ing the word ​“pro­posed” from the title. In 2016, Hamm sought review of that prac­tice from the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined to review his case.

In November 2017, Ohio was sched­uled to exe­cute Alva Campbell, a grave­ly ill pris­on­er with severe chron­ic obstruc­tive pul­monary dis­or­der and can­cer, whose veins, his lawyers said, were not appro­pri­ate for lethal injec­tion. The state start­ed, then halt­ed, the exe­cu­tion after prison per­son­nel were unable to find a vein in which they could place the IV line.