Critics: Alabama execution helps case against sedative

ATMORE, Ala. — An Alabama execution in which a prisoner heaved his chest, coughed and appeared to move offers more evidence that a drug used to sedate inmates before they are put to death should not be used in lethal injections, critics of the drug said Friday.

Alabama prison officials insisted there was no reason to believe Robert Bert Smith Jr. suffered after receiving the first of three drugs.

The debate focuses on midazolam, a drug that has been used in executions that were called into question in several other states. It has been the subject of multiple legal challenges.

Smith was given the drug late Thursday to put him to sleep. His movements occurred moments later during tests to determine an inmate’s level of consciousness before administering two more drugs to stop the heart and lungs.

Smith’s legal team said the prisoner’s movement showed “he was not anesthetized at any point during the agonizingly long procedure.” As they awaited results of a required autopsy, the attorneys said “no autopsy can measure the extent of Ron Smith’s suffering as he died.”

The 45-year-old was convicted in the 1994 fatal shooting of a Huntsville store clerk named Casey Wilson. Smith coughed and heaved his chest repeatedly over a 13-minute period of the 30-minute execution process and appeared to move his arms slightly after the two tests.

In a statement issued Friday, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn acknowledged that Smith coughed with his eyes closed, but officials said there was no “observational evidence that he suffered.”

This was Alabama’s second execution using midazolam. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a 2015 case from Oklahoma that condemned inmates had not proven that midazolam violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Inmates have continued to challenge its use, saying it is a sedative, not an anesthetic, and cannot reliably render a person unconscious.