We don need no steenkin' medical professionals. This is like anything else where a specialist's job could be created. How hard could it be to specially train a "non-professional" to find a vein and give him a "shot" of whatever is needed?
Posted on 02/21/2006 3:11:47 PM PST by doug from upland
State attorneys seek authority for Morales execution using one drug By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service
February 21, 2006, 11:42 a.m. SAN JOSE (BCN) - Lawyers for the state of California went back to a federal judge in San Jose this morning to seek authority for corrections officials to carry out an execution tonight using only one drug.
The action followed the postponement early this morning of the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Michael Morales, who was originally scheduled to be put to death shortly after midnight.
The execution was delayed after two anesthesiologists said they could not participate in the procedure because of ethical concerns.
The execution is now scheduled to take place at San Quentin State Prison at 7:30 p.m. with the use of 5 grams of the barbituate sodium pentothal instead of the usual sequence of three lethal drugs.
The state estimates it could take up to 45 minutes for the pentothal alone to cause death.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, in response to a lawsuit filed by Morales, last week gave state officials two options for carrying out the execution in ways aimed at ensuring the inmate does not suffer extreme pain.
One option was to have an anesthesiologist make sure the inmate was unconscious and the second option was to use only sodium pentothal.
State attorneys told the judge in a motion filed this morning that officials want the authority to go ahead with the second option. The attorneys wrote, "There is agreement among the experts that this dose will render Morales unconscious and is fatal."
The attorneys said the thiopental will act as a powerful anesthetic and will not cause pain.
Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said that if the judge grants the motion, he expects that Morales' legal team may appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Morales, 46, was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of a 17-year-old Lodi girl.
I bump a small bit of lead between the eyes!
I think Clorox should be adequate .....
Give him a hotshot of Heroin. It wont cause any pain and will take him out of there almost as soon as it hits him.
I hope they are keeping him up to the minute about how he will die.
I don't know why we don't use decompression chambers to execute prisoners. It's used all the time for pets and is painless.
how about mercury?
We don need no steenkin' medical professionals. This is like anything else where a specialist's job could be created. How hard could it be to specially train a "non-professional" to find a vein and give him a "shot" of whatever is needed?
Would seem fitting if they just strangled him with a belt until it broke, beat him with a hammer 23 times until his skull is crushed, and then stab him in the chest 4 times to make sure he's dead.
Hey, its better than what his 17 year old victim received...I left out the rape.
It would be fitting but a human being doing that would lose all humanity.
Not a bad idea ,and since California has about 650 people on death row they could build it to hold 10 or 15 guys and make a real dent in getting the job done.
They need to step back and fill his room with second hand smoke. That ought to kill him (according to the Kali whacko's).
I agree of course. Just wanted to make a point out the irony of the lengths we go to to make sure these monsters die peacefully despite the way they ended their victim's lives.
Point taken.
takes too long plus it's hard to pump the liquid stuff - then later he'd be too heavy to get off the gurney ...
No docs needed. Just strap in, and let the warden toss the big double bar switch.
The Guillotine would work, too.
Utah had the firing squad, which Gary Gilmore took. Do they still?
Docs have proven to be unreliable, so the Cali prison officials need to get them out of the loop.
Patients have surgery under anesthesia thousands of times per day and experience no pain from the drugs. Under general anesthesia they receive a barbiturate like drug and perhaps a curare like drug which relaxes the muscles. Then they wake up after the surgery. The difference is that the prisoner to be executed receives a potassium preparation that stops the heart. The depths of sedation used prevents any pain during the execution.
California seeks alternate way to execute Morales before midnight deadline
By Lisa Leff
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:30 p.m. February 21, 2006
SAN QUENTIN – The execution of a condemned killer was delayed after two anesthesiologists backed out because of ethical concerns, and prosecutors sought a judge's permission Tuesday to proceed by a different method of lethal injection before the death warrant expires just before midnight.
From today's U-T
Morales is denied stay of execution
Doctors face ethics showdown in California execution case
The execution, which had been scheduled for 12:01 a.m., was pushed back to Tuesday night after the two anesthesiologists withdrew. Their presence was required by a new set of guidelines issued last week by a federal judge after Michael Morales' lawyers argued the three-part lethal injection cocktail used in California was a cruel and unusual punishment.
In response, authorities went back to U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose in a bid to ensure the execution would be carried out before the 24-hour warrant expired at 11:59 p.m. After that, state officials would have to go back to the trial judge who imposed the death sentence in 1983 for another warrant.
Prison officials want to employ a different execution technique: administering a fatal overdose of barbiturate in lieu of the three-drug cocktail typically used in lethal injections. Fogel was hearing oral arguments on that proposal Tuesday by attorneys via the telephone.
With Morales, 46, waiting in the “death watch” cell at San Quentin State Prison just before midnight, defense lawyers requested a stay from Fogel, who last week ordered San Quentin to have the anesthesiologists on hand to minimize Morales' pain as he was put to death by lethal injection.
Although Fogel denied the motion, both anesthesiologists withdrew, citing ethical concerns raised by his ruling.
Fogel wrote that an anesthesiologist in the death chamber may have to demand that an executioner administer more sedatives through a separate intravenous line if the prisoner is conscious.
The anesthesiologists issued a statement through the prison saying they were concerned they would be forced to intervene in the execution if Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain.
“Any such intervention would clearly be medically unethical,” said the doctors, who have not been identified. “As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process.”
The American Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the California Medical Association all opposed the anesthesiologists' participation as unethical and unprofessional. They would have joined another doctor who is on duty at executions to declare the prisoner dead and otherwise ensure proper medical procedures are followed.
Seeking another warrant could prove difficult for the state, since the original sentencing judge, Charles McGrath, joined Morales this month in asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency. McGrath said he no longer believed the credibility of a jailhouse informant whose testimony helped land Morales on death row.
Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said McGrath was bound by law to sign a new death warrant, if requested.
“There's nothing in the statute that gives him any discretion,” Barankin said.
Morales would be the 14th murderer and the first Hispanic to be put to death since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977.
He was sentenced to death in 1983 for killing Terri Winchell- by attacking her with a hammer, stabbed and left to die half-naked in a vineyard. Morales plotted the killing with a gay cousin who was jealous of Winchell's relationship with the cousin's male lover. The cousin, Ricky Ortega, now 44, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
When Morales was told of the delay, he was “nonchalant,” according to prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. But relatives of Winchell were visibly upset, he said.
“There was a great deal of concern on their faces under the circumstances of some people that Michael Morales would not suffer,” Crittendon said. “They find that to be very disturbing.”
Morales' attorneys had argued that the three-part lethal injection cocktail used in California and many of the other 35 states with capital punishment, violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. They said a prisoner would feel excruciating pain from the last two chemicals if he were not fully sedated.
Fogel refused to derail the execution, but he gave prison officials two options: Retain the doctors to ensure Morales would be properly anesthetized, or forgo the paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs and overdose him on a sedative. With the anesthesiologists withdrawing, prison officials said they would use the second option, which requires Fogel's consent.
The three-drug execution method takes about 10 minutes once the drugs are injected compared to 30 minutes or more when solely an overdose of a sedative is used.
The case is Morales v. Hickman, 06-219.
Associated Press Writers David Kravets and Michelle Locke contributed to this story.
KABC radio news at 3pm Pacific is casting doubt and wondering if it is really going to happen today.
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