Mississippi Executes Thomas Loden, As John Hanson, Gerald Pizzuto Death Warrants Expire

The three final exe­cu­tions sched­uled in 2022 high­light­ed broad­er trends in the year’s exe­cu­tions — the exe­cu­tion of vul­ner­a­ble defen­dants, unavail­abil­i­ty of lethal-injec­tion drugs, and the sched­ul­ing of exe­cu­tions with­out regard for the abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly car­ry them out. Mississippi exe­cut­ed Thomas ​“Eddie” Loden Jr. (pic­tured) on December 14, the 18^th exe­cu­tion of the year, while two exe­cu­tions set for December 15 — John Hanson​’s in Oklahoma and Gerald Pizzuto Jr.​’s in Idaho — did not take place. 

In all, 33 of the 51 exe­cu­tions sched­uled for the year (65%) did not go for­ward. Ten were halt­ed by judi­cial stays, 17 by guber­na­to­r­i­al reprieves, two exe­cu­tion attempts failed when exe­cu­tion per­son­nel were unable to set IV lines, two death war­rants expired with­out the exe­cu­tion being attempt­ed, and one exe­cu­tion date was removed.

Loden suf­fered from sig­nif­i­cant vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties emblem­at­ic of those present for most of the pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in 2022. At least 13 of the 18 peo­ple exe­cut­ed in 2022 had one or more of the fol­low­ing impair­ments: seri­ous men­tal ill­ness (8); brain injury, devel­op­men­tal brain dam­age, or an IQ in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled range (5); and/​or chron­ic seri­ous child­hood trau­ma, neglect, and/​or abuse (12). Including Loden, half (9) of those exe­cut­ed in 2022 had spent at least 20 years on death row, a peri­od of time that has been rec­og­nized by inter­na­tion­al human rights bod­ies as con­sti­tut­ing ​“exces­sive and inhu­man” pun­ish­ment, in vio­la­tion of U.S. human rights obligations. 

Loden expe­ri­enced chron­ic trau­ma as a child in the form of phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and sex­u­al abuse. He attempt­ed sui­cide five times. After grad­u­at­ing high school, he became a Marine and received sev­er­al awards and medals for his ser­vice, but his com­bat ser­vice in the Gulf War left him with PTSD. Loden was the fourth mil­i­tary vet­er­an exe­cut­ed in 2022. Loden plead­ed guilty at tri­al and waived his right to a jury and the pre­sen­ta­tion of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. Post-con­vic­tion attor­neys would lat­er argue that he was advised to do so by tri­al coun­sel who failed to inves­ti­gate the case. 

Executions sched­uled for December 15 in Idaho and Oklahoma could not go for­ward because of state admin­is­tra­tive fail­ures. Idaho sched­uled Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. with­out the drugs on hand to car­ry it out. When the Idaho Department of Correction was unable to obtain the drugs in the short win­dow pro­vid­ed by the war­rant, it advised the courts that the exe­cu­tion would not hap­pen. Oklahoma set an exe­cu­tion date for John Hanson even though he was in fed­er­al cus­tody and the state had not made arrange­ments for him to be trans­ferred to the state for exe­cu­tion. His death war­rant, too, was allowed to expire when Oklahoma was unable to secure his transfer.

Idaho pros­e­cu­tors sought and obtained a death war­rant for Pizzuto after a legal bat­tle ear­li­er in the year over whether the gov­er­nor or Commission of Pardons and Parole held final clemen­cy author­i­ty in the state. In 2021, the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole had vot­ed 4 – 3 to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for Pizzuto, cit­ing his sig­nif­i­cant health prob­lems, includ­ing ter­mi­nal can­cer. Governor Brad Little reject­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion but an Idaho tri­al court agreed with Pizzuto that he lacked the author­i­ty to do so. The Idaho Supreme Court over­turned that rul­ing and pros­e­cu­tors moved for an exe­cu­tion date with­out con­firm­ing that that the Idaho Department of Corrections had access to the lethal-injec­tion drugs nec­es­sary to car­ry out the execution.

On November 30, 2022, Idaho Deputy Attorney General L. LaMont Anderson noti­fied a fed­er­al dis­trict court that the state would allow the death war­rant to expire because it could not obtain exe­cu­tion drugs. ​“Our efforts to obtain the nec­es­sary chem­i­cals have been unsuc­cess­ful to date,” Idaho Department of Corrections Director Josh Tewalt said in a mem­o­ran­dum. ​“While our efforts to secure chem­i­cals remain ongo­ing, I have no rea­son to believe our sta­tus will change pri­or to the sched­uled exe­cu­tion on December 15, 2022. In my pro­fes­sion­al judge­ment, I believe it is in the best inter­est of jus­tice to allow the death war­rant to expire and stand down our execution preparation.” 

“The State’s deci­sion to get a death war­rant while being unpre­pared for an exe­cu­tion led to a tremen­dous amount of unnec­es­sary and cost­ly lit­i­ga­tion, all at tax­pay­er expense,” Pizzuto’s lawyer, Deb Czuba, said in a statement.

Oklahoma was also unpre­pared to car­ry out the sched­uled December 15 exe­cu­tion of John Hanson. At the time pros­e­cu­tors sought and obtained his death war­rant, Hanson was serv­ing a life sen­tence in fed­er­al prison for armed rob­beries unre­lat­ed to his Oklahoma death sen­tence. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections sub­se­quent­ly request­ed that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) trans­fer Hanson to the cus­tody of the state. In October, the BOP refused Oklahoma’s trans­fer request, curt­ly stat­ing that the trans­fer ​“is not in the public’s best inter­est.” Oklahoma filed suit in fed­er­al court, argu­ing that BOP offi­cials lacked the author­i­ty to deny their request. Oklahoma pros­e­cu­tors chose to file their com­plaint in a fed­er­al judi­cial dis­trict in which Hanson was not in cus­tody so that the case would be heard by a judge pros­e­cu­tors believed would offer the state a favor­able forum. Ultimately, on December 13, Judge Reed O’Connor denied Oklahoma’s request, dis­miss­ing the case for lack of jurisdiction.

The actions by Idaho and Oklahoma in set­ting exe­cu­tion dates with­out assur­ances that they could be car­ried out cul­mi­nat­ed a year of admin­is­tra­tive reck­less­ness and incom­pe­tence in seek­ing to con­duct exe­cu­tions with­out regard to or in defi­ance of prac­ti­cal or legal pre­req­ui­sites for car­ry­ing them out. Earlier in 2022, South Carolina sched­uled the exe­cu­tions of Brad Sigmon and Richard Moore. The South Carolina Supreme Court halt­ed their exe­cu­tions in April to per­mit a tri­al court to con­sid­er their legal chal­lenge to the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols. It was the third time the court had stayed their exe­cu­tions. The state had first sched­uled the men to be by lethal injec­tion with­out hav­ing a sup­ply of drugs to car­ry them out. After state law was amend­ed to pro­vide for exe­cu­tion by elec­tric chair or fir­ing squad if drugs were unavail­able, pros­e­cu­tors sought and obtained death war­rants to exe­cute the men by elec­tric chair before the state had pre­pared a pro­to­col for the fir­ing-squad option. The court stayed those exe­cu­tion dates, find­ing that the planned exe­cu­tions vio­lat­ed the state-law require­ment that the pris­on­ers be per­mit­ted to select fir­ing squad instead of death by elec­tro­cu­tion. After the South Carolina Department of Corrections adopt­ed a fir­ing squad pro­to­col, pros­e­cu­tors sought a third set of death war­rants, with­out pro­vid­ing any evi­dence of their efforts to locate exe­cu­tion drugs. The pris­on­ers sued to block the exe­cu­tions, say­ing pros­e­cu­tors had not shown that drugs were unavail­able and that both the elec­tric chair and the fir­ing squad vio­lat­ed South Carolina’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against ​“cru­el, unusu­al, and cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments.” That led to the third set of orders by the South Carolina Supreme Court stop­ping the scheduled executions.

In September, after hear­ing four days of expert tes­ti­mo­ny, the tri­al tri­al court ruled in favor of the pris­on­ers’ state con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge and issued an injunc­tion against exe­cu­tions by fir­ing squad or elec­tric chair. JThe South Carolina Supreme Court is sched­uled to hear the appeal in the case January 5, 2023. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee stayed the exe­cu­tion of Oscar Smith in April just before it was sched­uled to start after he was informed that exe­cu­tion per­son­nel had failed to test the exe­cu­tion drugs for bac­te­r­i­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, as required by the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Citing a ​“tech­ni­cal over­sight” in prepa­ra­tions for Smith’s exe­cu­tion, Lee called off all exe­cu­tions in his state and ordered an ​“inde­pen­dent review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. A series of arti­cles pub­lished in May in The Tennessean revealed mis­takes and ques­tion­able con­duct at every step of the lethal-injec­tion process, from the com­pound­ing of the exe­cu­tion drugs by a phar­ma­cy with a prob­lem­at­ic safe­ty his­to­ry, to test­ing pro­ce­dures, to the stor­age and han­dling of the drugs once they were in the pos­ses­sion of the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC). A series of botched exe­cu­tion attempts also led Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to call for a halt to exe­cu­tions in her state in November for a ​“top-to-bot­tom review” of the state’s execution protocol..