Four stays were grant­ed for exe­cu­tions that were sched­uled to take place this week in Texas and Georgia, and Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for a for­eign nation­al fac­ing exe­cu­tion in January 2004. In Texas, courts ordered three stays of exe­cu­tion. Two of the cas­es involved chal­lenges to the use of pan­curo­ni­um bro­mide as part of the state’s lethal injec­tion process. A third case, that of Bobby Lee Hines, was stayed on the basis of a men­tal retar­da­tion claim. Attorneys for Texas death row inmates Billy Frank Vickers and Kevin Lee Zimmerman filed a suit stat­ing that one of the lethal injec­tion drugs, which has been banned by the American Veterinary Medical Association, vio­lates the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The Supreme Court issued a stay for Zimmerman just 20 min­utes before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Vickers’ exe­cu­tion was put off by the state because of uncer­tain­ty of how the courts would rule. (Associated Press, December 11, 2003) Pancuronium bro­mide is used in 28 states that exe­cute by lethal injec­tion.

In Georgia, just hours before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Eddie Crawford, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal to have sev­er­al pieces of pos­si­ble blood evi­dence test­ed for DNA. Attorneys for Crawford stat­ed that the evi­dence must be test­ed based on a new law grant­i­ng inmates greater access to post-con­vic­tion DNA-test­ing. Oral argu­ments in the case are expect­ed to take place in February. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 11, 2003).

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy to Hung Thanh Le, a Vietnamese for­eign nation­al on the state’s death row. The Board vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to rec­om­mend relief after hear­ing Le’s claim that he did not have access to legal help from his embassy after being arrest­ed and accused of mur­der, and that his orig­i­nal tri­al attor­ney failed to con­sid­er his clien­t’s post trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der as a pos­si­ble defense. (The Oklahoman, December 10, 2003).
See Methods of Execution and Clemency.

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