NEW RESOURCES: The Angolite Reviews the Death Penalty and Experimentation on Prisoners

The most recent issue of The Angolite, a mag­a­zine writ­ten and pub­lished by pris­on­ers at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, which hous­es the state’s death row, con­tains a num­ber of arti­cles rel­e­vant to the death penal­ty. The first, ​“Shifting Values,” dis­cuss­es the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty through an exam­i­na­tion of devel­op­ments in 2013. A sec­ond arti­cle, ​“Death House Cat & Mouse,” reports on Louisiana’s com­pli­cat­ed strug­gle to obtain lethal injec­tion drugs for exe­cu­tions. Another lengthy arti­cle, ​“First, Do No Harm,” dis­cuss­es the his­to­ry of med­ical exper­i­men­ta­tion on pris­on­ers through­out the U.S. While not focused on the death penal­ty, the arti­cle is rel­e­vant to the cur­rent use of untried drugs and com­bi­na­tions of drugs in lethal injec­tions around the country.

In February, 2013, Louisiana announced that it was chang­ing its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col from three drugs to one drug, only ten days before it was set to exe­cute Christopher Sepulvado. Sepulvado’s exe­cu­tion was resched­uled for February 5, 2014. Once again, just a few days before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the state changed its pro­to­col, this time say­ing it would use a two-drug pro­to­col of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone. Sepulvado’s exe­cu­tion was stayed while courts review the new protocol.

The arti­cle on exper­i­men­ta­tion in pris­ons by John Corley includes exam­i­na­tions of a drug study in which 400 pris­on­ers were infect­ed with malar­ia, an exper­i­ment in Philadelphia that exposed inmates to the high­ly tox­ic chem­i­cal diox­in to see if they devel­oped can­cer, and numer­ous stud­ies of exper­i­men­tal vac­cines and med­ica­tions. In some cas­es, inmates were offered reduced sen­tences or spe­cial priv­i­leges in exchange for par­tic­i­pat­ing, but many went uncompensated. 

(The Angolite, Vol. 39, No. 1, January/​February 2014; DPIC post­ed June 17, 2014). See Lethal Injection and Studies. If you are inter­est­ed in sub­scrib­ing to The Angolite, fill out an mail this form.