An autop­sy of the last man exe­cut­ed in Kentucky, Edward L. Harper, found only 3 to 6.5 mil­ligrams per liter of bar­bi­tu­rate in Harper’s blood – a lev­el leav­ing a high chance that Harper was con­scious through­out the exe­cu­tion and that he felt pain when he was inject­ed with sub­se­quent drugs that par­a­lyzed and suf­fo­cat­ed him, and then stopped his heart. Dr. Mark Dershwitz, the pros­e­cu­tion expert who devel­oped the stan­dards that Kentucky relies upon, said the low lev­el of bar­bi­tu­rate found in Mr. Harper’s body was poten­tial­ly trou­bling, stat­ing “[t]he blood lev­el should be a lot high­er than sev­en,” the lev­el at which about 50 per­cent of peo­ple are uncon­scious and 50 per­cent con­scious. Applying the same stan­dards, autop­sies con­duct­ed by state med­ical exam­in­ers after 23 exe­cu­tions in South Carolina and 11 in North Carolina, would indi­cate a 50 per­cent or greater chance that eight of the con­demned men were con­scious through­out their exe­cu­tions. In one of those cas­es, the like­li­hood of con­scious­ness would have been 90 per­cent. In four, it would have been 100 per­cent. (N.Y. Times, Sept. 16, 2004). See oth­er Botched Executions.

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