Monday, October 2, 2006

The Chaos Behind California Executions
Trial tes­ti­mo­ny paints lethal injec­tion meth­ods as hap­haz­ard, with lit­tle med­ical over­sight.

By Maura Dolan and Henry Weinstein
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

SAN JOSE — ​“Operational Procedure No. 770,” the state’s name for exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion, is per­formed in a dark, cramped room by men and women who know lit­tle, if any­thing, about the dead­ly drugs they inject under extreme stress.

Thousands of pages of depo­si­tions and four days of tes­ti­mo­ny last week in a fed­er­al court­room here pro­vid­ed the most inti­mate por­trait yet of a state’s lethal injec­tion meth­ods.

Witnesses depict­ed exe­cu­tions by lethal injec­tion — long con­sid­ered a more humane alter­na­tive to the gas cham­ber or the elec­tric chair — as almost hap­haz­ard events, and med­ical experts on both sides could not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that one or more inmates had been con­scious and expe­ri­enced an excru­ci­at­ing sen­sa­tion of drown­ing or stran­gu­la­tion before death.

Describing the pres­sure exe­cu­tion­ers feel and the sur­re­al atmos­phere in which they work, one exe­cu­tion­er explained: ​“There’s no oth­er place in the world that you’re asked to start an IV for that pur­pose.“

U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who presided over the tri­al here, is now review­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny and records to deter­mine if the state can con­tin­ue to per­form lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions or if it should revise pro­ce­dures to ensure the con­demned don’t suf­fer cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Constitution. The lit­i­ga­tion was brought by Michael Morales, con­demned for the 1981 mur­der of Terri Winchell, 17, a high school stu­dent from Lodi.

Morales, like inmates in sev­er­al oth­er states who have also chal­lenged lethal injec­tion, claims pris­on­ers may not be anes­thetized prop­er­ly before receiv­ing a mus­cle-par­a­lyz­ing drug that would mask any suf­fer­ing before a third, heart-stop­ping chem­i­cal kills them. His wit­ness­es insist­ed that trained med­ical per­son­nel are need­ed to ensure a humane exe­cu­tion.

The tes­ti­mo­ny of duel­ing doc­tors and phar­ma­col­o­gists under­scored the incon­gruity of using a med­ical pro­ce­dure to pro­duce a decid­ed­ly non­med­ical result.

Witnesses for both sides stum­bled when dis­cussing the con­demned, fre­quent­ly refer­ring to an inmate as ​“the patient.“

Lawyers for the state defend­ed the work of the exe­cu­tion­ers, stress­ing it was much less com­pli­cat­ed than med­i­cine. An exe­cu­tion, after all, is sup­posed to be pun­ish­ment, the attor­neys remind­ed the court.

When anes­the­sia is admin­is­tered in a hos­pi­tal set­ting, ​“you have two objec­tives — one to ren­der the patient uncon­scious, and two, to make sure you don’t kill him,” said senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Dane Gillette, the lead lawyer for the state. ​“That is not at all the objec­tive of a lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion.“

All California exe­cu­tions take place at San Quentin prison north of San Francisco. The con­demned is strapped on a gur­ney in a small, mint-green room that for decades served as the gas cham­ber.

After the IVs are set up, the cham­ber’s heavy, sol­id steel door is shut and locked, and the inmate is left alone. A prison employ­ee leans into the door to seal it, an appar­ent holdover from the days when the prison had to ensure tox­ic gas would not escape.

The exe­cu­tion team retires to an adja­cent room, where mem­bers insert the exe­cu­tion drugs by syringe into IV lines that run through the wall and into the inmate’s arms.

That ante­room is often packed with state offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors and oth­er gov­ern­ment vis­i­tors. There were ​“so many peo­ple in that room you did­n’t even know who they were” and why they were there, Dr. Donald Calvo, a prison doc­tor, tes­ti­fied in a depo­si­tion.

Former San Quentin Warden Steven W. Ornoski said that dur­ing one exe­cu­tion, ​“I don’t believe I could move from my spot much, if any.” He once had to tell some­one to leave. It was a doc­tor.

A nurse work­ing in the jammed room said she had to pass syringes to an out­stretched hand whose own­er she could not see. The same nurse said she did not know the ori­gins of a doc­u­ment with instruc­tions for the drugs. She had sim­ply found it ​“in the gas cham­ber.“

To pre­vent the exe­cu­tion­ers from being seen or iden­ti­fied by wit­ness­es, their room is illu­mi­nat­ed only by a red light. A doc­tor who filled out exe­cu­tion records said the room was so dark he had to use a flash­light to see what he was writ­ing.

The IV bags hang from ducts so high that it would be impos­si­ble to deter­mine if every­thing was work­ing prop­er­ly, tes­ti­fied Dr. Mark Heath, a Columbia University anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and expert wit­ness for Morales. A mem­ber of the exe­cu­tion team said in a depo­si­tion that she believed ​“the jan­i­tor” helped set the bags.

The exe­cu­tion­ers are cho­sen from among a group of vol­un­teer prison work­ers. Though sev­er­al have had med­ical train­ing as reg­is­tered nurs­es, back­ground screen­ing appears to have been min­i­mal.

A prison employ­ee was cho­sen as team leader even though he had missed months of work and had been under care for post-trau­mat­ic stress caused, he said in his depo­si­tion, by ​“my years of work­ing in the prison sys­tem.” That exe­cu­tion­er, who was tak­ing anti­de­pres­sants, also had been dis­ci­plined for a drunk dri­ving con­vic­tion.

Testimony sug­gest­ed lax over­sight of the drugs issued at San Quentin for exe­cu­tions. A wit­ness tes­ti­fied that bot­tles of the bar­bi­tu­rate anes­thet­ic tak­en for prac­tice ses­sions were not opened, but there was no evi­dence they were returned.

Fogel want­ed to know whether the anes­thet­ic could be used as a recre­ation­al drug. Witnesses for the state and Morales dis­agreed.

Lawyers tes­ti­fied about wit­ness­ing exe­cu­tions, one in California and the oth­ers in North Carolina, which has a lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure sim­i­lar to California’s.

Heather Jarvis recalled watch­ing North Carolina cap­i­tal pris­on­er Edward Hartman, 38, wheeled into the exe­cu­tion cham­ber on a gur­ney, cov­ered from neck to toe by a white sheet.

​“I saw Eddie’s eyes close, and I thought to myself, ​‘Here we go. This is it.’ Almost imme­di­ate­ly his eyes opened again, not ful­ly, more than halfway up but not com­plete­ly. His eyes remained open for the entire exe­cu­tion.“

She said his throat began to throb and pul­sate like a lizard’s, and his chest heaved and strained so vio­lent­ly she thought he would fall off the gur­ney.

​“Then he became still, and his eyes final­ly did close.“

After review­ing evi­dence about lethal injec­tion, Fogel ear­li­er this year ordered California to either have a doc­tor present at exe­cu­tions or instead give the inmate only a mas­sive, fatal dose of anes­the­sia with­out the oth­er drugs.

The state chose to go with the doc­tor option, hir­ing two anes­the­si­ol­o­gists but assur­ing them they would be mere observers.

Dr. Robert Singler, a Napa anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, reluc­tant­ly agreed to join the team at the request of a friend, Darc Keller, who works for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Singler tes­ti­fied in court that he believed the state’s meth­ods would ensure a humane exe­cu­tion.

The oth­er doc­tor, iden­ti­fied as ​“Anesthesiologist 2,” was to play a less­er role. He said in a depo­si­tion he agreed to be present only after he was assured he would have ​“noth­ing” to do.

​“What do you mean by ​‘noth­ing’?” he said he asked.

​“You would have no respon­si­bil­i­ties,” he quot­ed Keller as say­ing.

Anesthesiologist 2 said he even received per­mis­sion from the war­den to stand in a room off the ante­room dur­ing the exe­cu­tion so he would not have to watch it.

On the night Morales was to die, the two anes­the­si­ol­o­gists learned that an appeals court had ruled they would have to inter­vene if prob­lems arose dur­ing the exe­cu­tion. Both Singler and Anesthesiologist 2 refused, say­ing they were bound by the physi­cian’s oblig­a­tion to do no harm.

Morales, who had been stripped of his pos­ses­sions and moved to a spe­cial cell, learned sev­er­al hours lat­er that his appoint­ment for Operational Procedure No. 770 had been postponed.