At a hear­ing in fed­er­al District Court in Maryland, Dr. Mark Heath, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Columbia University, tes­ti­fied that those des­ig­nat­ed to car­ry out lethal injec­tions in the state were unpre­pared and unqual­i­fied for the task. ​“The total­i­ty of all their knowl­edge is gross­ly inad­e­quate,” Heath stat­ed.

Sworn tes­ti­mo­ny from mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team was shown at the hear­ing. In one video­taped seg­ment, the doc­tor who was respon­si­ble for declar­ing that exe­cut­ed inmates were dead expressed sur­prise that the state had also des­ig­nat­ed her as the per­son who would slice into an inmate’s limb to insert a catheter in a deep­er vein if the team’s nurs­ing assis­tant could not start a standard IV.

Asked whether she would ​“feel com­fort­able” per­form­ing such a task — called a ​“cut-down pro­ce­dure” — the doc­tor respond­ed, ​“I do not do cut-down pro­ce­dures. Period.”

In anoth­er clip, the retired state troop­er respon­si­ble for inject­ing lethal dos­es of three drugs into IV lines said he had nev­er before seen the Maryland Execution Operations Manual.

The hear­ings are being con­duct­ed in the case of Vernon Evans. He was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed dur­ing the week of Feb. 6, but received a stay from the Maryland Court of Appeals. The stay enabled him to pur­sue a chal­lenge to Maryland’s lethal injec­tion process in fed­er­al court.
(Baltimore Sun, Sept. 20, 2006). See DPIC’s Lethal Injection page. Hearings begin Sept. 26 in California on that state’s lethal injection procedures.

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