DEATH PENALTY opponents will say anything, no matter how unbelievable, to stop an execution during the appeals process. There is no claim too bogus for some lawyers and activists -- and apparently no claim too bogus for some medical journals. Last month, a second medical journal printed an article that suggestesd lethal injection may routinely subject death-row inmates to agonizing pain before they die. In California, the three-drug lethal-injection protocol starts with 12.5 times the amount of sodium pentothal needed to begin invasive surgery, and is followed by lethal doses of two other drugs. The protocol is designed not to...