The drugs are supposed to put a death row inmate to sleep before stopping the inmate's lungs and heart.
However, controversies around the country show a three-drug combination Tennessee is prepared to use as it resumes executions in 2018 may leave witnesses scarred and death row offenders in pain — and alive.
Documents obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee show the state has a new protocol for what drugs it will use to put inmates to death. A supplier of those drugs also warned the state they may not actually stop inmates from feeling pain before they die, according to emails also obtained.
The issues already prompted a legal challenge and will likely spur death penalty critics to characterize use of the drugs as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
Lethal injection is the primary means of carrying out the death penalty in Tennessee, although the electric chair is also legal. The state had used pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but manufacturers have largely stopped selling the drug to anyone using it for executions.
In 2017, the general counsel for the Tennessee Department of Correction said the state did not have the drugs needed to carry out an execution but could get them if they needed.
On Thursday, after the Tennessee Supreme Court announced it had scheduled three executions, the department said it has the necessary drugs.
The documents and emails point to the department's inability to find pentobarbital. It is instead relying on the easier-to-obtain but far more controversial three-drug mixture used in other states.
The first drug, midazolam, is supposed to put an inmate in a state akin to sleep. The second, vercuronium bromide, stops the inmate's lungs. The third, potassium chloride, stops the heart.
The problem in executions carried out in Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio and elsewhere is the midazolam in some cases has failed to put the inmate to sleep or stop them from feeling pain.
A legal filing from attorneys defending death row inmates pointed to the emails and new lethal injection protocol as a reason the state supreme court should delay any executions.
"Tennessee deliberately chose to revise its execution protocol to include as the first drug, midazolam, despite knowledge of the substantial harm that drug will cause. It is the most controversial protocol ever adopted by the state," the legal filing states.
As noted in the legal filing, a supplier pointed out these problems to Tennessee prison officials in September.
"Here is my concern with midazolam...it does not elicit strong analgesic effects. The subjects may be able to feel pain from the administration of the second and third drugs. Potassium chloride especially," wrote the supplier in an email.
"It may not be a huge concern but can open the door to some scrutiny on your end."
A department spokeswoman did not immediately answers questions Friday about the protocol.
James Hawkins, a 41-year-old Shelby County man convicted in 2011 of killing the mother of his three children, is scheduled to die May 9.
Billy Ray Irick, a 59-year-old Knox County man convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl is set to be executed Aug. 9.
Sedrick Clayton, a 34-year-old Shelby County man convicted of a triple murder in 2014, is scheduled to die Nov. 28.
Hawkins and Clayton have yet to exhaust their legal appeals, so it's likely their executions will be delayed. Irick, who's been on death row in Nashville for more than three decades, has fewer legal options.
Source: The Tennessean, Dave Boucher, January 19, 2018
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us:
deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
