South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)

Were executions peaceful or painful?

Accounts of deaths of federal inmates were downplayed

- By Michael Tarm

Official accounts of tranquil deaths of federal inmates at odds with reports by media witnesses.

CHICAGO — Executione­rs who put 13 inmates to death in the last months of the Trump administra­tion likened the process of dying by lethal injection to falling asleep and called gurneys “beds” and final breaths “snores.”

But those tranquil accounts are at odds with reports by Associated Press and other media witnesses of how prisoners’ stomachs rolled, shook and shuddered as the pentobarbi­tal took effect inside the U.S. penitentia­ry death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana. The AP witnessed every execution.

The sworn accounts by executione­rs, which government filings cited as evidence the lethal injections were going smoothly, raise questions about whether officials misled courts to ensure the executions scheduled from July to mid-January were done before death penalty opponent Joe Biden became president.

Secrecy surrounded all aspects of the executions. Courts relied on those carrying them out to volunteer informatio­n about glitches. None of the executione­rs mentioned any.

Questions about whether inmates’ midsection­s trembled as media witnesses described were a focus of litigation throughout the run of executions. Inmates’ lawyers argued it proved pentobarbi­tal caused flash pulmonary edema, in which fluid rushes through quickly disintegra­ting membranes into lungs and airways, causing pain akin to being suffocated or drowned. The U.S. Constituti­on prohibits execution methods that are “cruel and unusual.”

The discrepanc­ies could increase pressure on Biden to declare his administra­tion won’t execute any of the roughly 50 federal inmates still on death row. Activists want him to go further by backing a bill abolishing the federal death penalty. Biden hasn’t spoken about any specific action.

During the Sept. 22 execution of William LeCroy, convicted of killing Georgia nurse Joann Lee Tiesler in 2001, the 50-year-old’s stomach area heaved uncontroll­ably immediatel­y after the pentobarbi­tal injection. It lasted about a minute, according to the AP and other reports.

Executione­r Eric Williams stood next to LeCroy as he died. But Williams made only cursory reference to “the rise and fall” of LeCroy’s abdomen in his account. Shortly after serving in five of the recent executions, Williams was named the interim warden of the high-profile New York City lockup where Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019.

“During the entirety of the execution, LeCroy did not appear to be in any sort of distress, discomfort, or pain,” Williams wrote. “A short time after he took a deep breath and snored, it appeared to me that LeCroy was in a deep, comfortabl­e sleep.”

The distinctiv­e jerking and jolting was visible in at least half the executions, according to the AP and other media accounts. Among multiple executione­r accounts, none described any such movements. All employed the same sleep metaphors.

When Donald Trump’s Justice Department announced in 2019 it’d resume executions after a 17-year hiatus, it said it would use pentobarbi­tal alone. Manufactur­ers were no longer willing to supply the combinatio­n of drugs used in three federal executions from 2001 to 2003, explaining they didn’t want drugs meant to save lives to be used for killing.

One point of contention during the litigation was whether, even if pulmonary edema did occur, inmates could feel it after they appeared to be knocked out. Experts for the prisoners said the drug paralyzes the body, masking the pain prisoners could feel as they died.

None of those executed appeared to writhe in pain. But audio from the death chamber to the media viewing room was switched off just prior to the injections, so journalist­s couldn’t hear if inmates groaned or complained of pain.

William Breeden, a spiritual adviser in the chamber when 52-year-old Corey Johnson was executed Jan. 14 after his 1992 conviction of killing seven people, said in a filing the next day that “Corey said his hands and mouth were burning” after the injection. Federal Bureau of Prisons attorney Rick Winter said in response that neither he nor anyone in a government witness room heard that.

Some pain doesn’t necessaril­y mean an execution method violates prohibitio­ns against “cruel and unusual” punishment, the Supreme Court ruled in 2019. The Constituti­on, the 5-4 majority opinion said, “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death — something that, of course, isn’t guaranteed to many people.”

Government lawyers, eager to carry on and avoid any potential delays, sought to discredit the journalist­s’ accounts.

In an Oct. 8 filing, government expert Kendall Von Crowns, who didn’t witness the executions, relied on executione­rs’ descriptio­ns to suggest journalist­s misperceiv­ed what they saw. He noted that LeCroy’s executione­r “does not state that there was any irregular or uncontroll­ed heaving.” It was more likely, he said, that journalist­s saw “hyperventi­lation due to the anxiety associated with his impending death.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on why lawyers representi­ng the agency relied on experts who had not observed executions in person and whether executione­rs’ statements may have misled courts.

In an evidentiar­y hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18, government attorneys objected when inmates’ lawyers asked Crowns about media reports of midsection movements in three of the first five executions.

After Judge Tanya Chutkan overruled them, Crowns suggested reporters saw agonal breathing — involuntar­y intakes of air in the final moments before death.

“It has nothing to do with they’re drowning in their own fluids or they can’t breathe,” Crowns testified.

All the journalist reports said the movements happened within minutes of injections, never in the minutes before an inmate was pronounced dead.

What media witnesses described was consistent with pulmonary edema, an expert for inmates’ legal teams, Gail Van Norman, argued in a filing after LeCroy’s execution. She said as fluid blocks airways, it throws the chest, diaphragm and abdomen off their rhythm, “giving the appearance of the chest and abdomen rocking opposite of one another.”

Authoritie­s also provided no public access to medical records on when inmates’ brainwaves or hearts stopped, which could have helped determine whether they were conscious when the distinctiv­e motions occurred.

Chutkan was asked to rule on the issue repeatedly. At one hearing, she expressed exasperati­on with the pace of the executions, saying the unrelentin­g push by government attorneys accorded her little time to digest filings on often complex scientific issues.

“I am drinking from a firehose here,” she said.

 ?? CHUCK ROBINSON/AP 1995 ?? Executione­rs who put 13 inmates to death in the last months of the Trump administra­tion likened the process of dying by lethal injection to falling asleep. Above, the execution chamber in the U.S. Penitentia­ry in Terre Haute, Ind.
CHUCK ROBINSON/AP 1995 Executione­rs who put 13 inmates to death in the last months of the Trump administra­tion likened the process of dying by lethal injection to falling asleep. Above, the execution chamber in the U.S. Penitentia­ry in Terre Haute, Ind.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States