Michael Morales Execution Update

THE execution of a Californian man was postponed at the last minute yesterday after two court-appointed doctors refused to help to administer the lethal injection, a move that reignited America’s death penalty debate.

Michael Morales, who has been on death row since 1983 for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, was scheduled to die at 12.01am. But the execution was suddenly put off after the two anaesthetists withdrew, claiming their involvement would violate their medical oath to preserve life.

The involvement of the doctors, which had been ordered by a judge, was the first such case in the US and stemmed directly from research in The Lancet, the British medical journal, last year. The article, published in April, has shaken up advocates on both sides of the death penalty issue in the US because it suggested that some prisoners executed by lethal injection suffered agonising deaths.

Morales’s lawyers, one of whom is Kenneth Starr, the former prosecutor whose investigation of Bill Clinton uncovered the Monica Lewinsky affair, cited the Lancet article last week when they argued in court that death by legal injection violated the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

They said that Morales, 46, might feel too much pain if the sedative he is given, the first of a three-part cocktail of drugs designed to kill him, does not make him sufficiently unconscious before a paralysing agent and the final heart-stopping drugs are administered.

But rather than stay the execution, the judge gave prison officials two options: bring in the doctors to ensure that Morales was properly anaesthetised, or forgo the paralysing and heart-stopping drugs and kill Morales with a huge dose of barbiturates. The state of California agreed to provide two unidentified anaesthetists.

Just hours before the execution time, everything appeared in order. Despite the fierce opposition to medical participation in executions by the American Society of Anaesthesiologists and the American Medical Association, on the ground that physicians take an oath to preserve life, the two doctors are understood to have volunteered to attend the lethal injection procedure.

Then, shortly before the execution was due to take place, the doctors withdrew. They appear to have become alarmed at the details of the judge’s order, in particular a requirement that they intervene in the event that Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain. “Any such intervention would clearly be medically unethical,” they said.

Last night Morales was again due to be executed, this time by a fatal overdose of barbiturates. But the delays and confusion increased hopes among death penalty opponents that both public opinion, and that of the courts, was shifting against the death penalty.

Last month an execution in Florida was postponed — with Clarence Hill, the prisoner, strapped to a stretcher in the death chamber — after an intervention by the US Supreme Court. The court refused to rule on whether death by lethal injection constituted cruel and inhuman punishment, but granted Hill a stay on the issue of whether he could pursue that claim in a lower court.

Public support for the death penalty has slipped, from 80 per cent in 1994 to 64 per cent. Last year the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of juveniles was unconstitutional, and juries have become slower to hand down the death penalty.

Morales was convicted of throttling, raping and then killing Terri Winchell, 17, in 1981.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2051948,00.html

WASHINGTON The refusal of two California anesthesiologists to take part in the execution by lethal injection Tuesday of a murderer and rapist raised new questions about the dominant method of carrying out the death penalty in the United States.

Michael Angelo Morales had been scheduled to die at one minute after midnight Tuesday for the brutal murder in 1981 of a 17-year-old girl who was dating the boyfriend of Morales's jealous bisexual cousin.

The doctors, whose names have not been made public, were to have certified that a drug administered to Morales had rendered him unconscious before two other chemicals were administered to kill him.

Their role was the result of the defense attorneys' appeal to a federal judge that death by injection could cause pain that transgressed the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment." The doctors' refusal precipitated hours of confusion. Finally, the execution was postponed to late in the day.

"While we contemplated a positive role that might enable us to verify a humane execution protocol for Mr. Morales," the anesthesiologists said in a statement read by a spokesman at San Quentin State Prison, "what is being asked of us now is ethically unacceptable." The doctors said they were concerned about possibly having to intervene if Morales were to awake or appear to be in pain. That, they said, "would clearly be medically unethical."

The American Medical Association agreed, saying that their participation would violate the doctors' Hippocratic oath to prevent harm. Other professional groups concurred.

The prison rescheduled the execution for 7:30 p.m. local time, using a different method: administering a lethal dose of barbiturates, a method that does not require an anesthesiologist's presence.

Morales appeared Monday to have exhausted his legal appeals when the Supreme Court refused to take his case. It was unclear whether the confusing events Tuesday might create space for further delay. Morales's death warrant was to expire Wednesday, though it could be renewed.

The case has sparked debate among Californians: Is any level of pain permissible in the execution of a brutal killer? Can doctors play no role to lessen that pain?

Since 1976, lethal injection has been the preferred method of execution in the United States: It is used in 37 of the 38 states that practice capital punishment. In all, 841 executions have been carried out by injection, 152 by electrocution and a total of 16 by the next three methods: gas chamber, hanging and firing squad.

"Lethal injection is the only method being used now, for all practical purposes," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment partly because of inequities in its application. "The chemicals are almost the same in all the states, and they're being challenged in all the states." He said that approach has remained essentially unchanged for 30 years.

Anti-capital punishment groups point to several deaths by injection that have gone bad. One common difficulty is finding veins in the arms or legs of longtime intravenous drug users. Technicians and orderlies have taken up to an hour to find a usable vein. In one bizarre instance, an inmate finally helped a technician do so. In another, a syringe came out of a condemned man's vein, spraying deadly chemicals in the direction of witnesses.

In other instances, witnesses have heard the condemned moan and groan, or seen them writhe or convulse.

The Death Penalty Information Center provides this description: Two needles are inserted into the inmate's veins, connected by tubes to hidden intravenous drips. The first, a harmless saline solution, is started immediately. The inmate is then injected with sodium thiopental to put him or her to sleep. Next comes pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscular system and stops breathing. Finally, potassium chloride stops the heart.

In the Morales case, Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for Northern California appeared moved last week by the defense's arguments that the chemicals sometimes take minutes to stop the condemned person's heart. The attorneys said the sedatives and paralytic agents might cover up pain, but did not prevent it.

The judge presented prison authorities with three options: an injection of barbiturates only; use of the three-chemical injection, but with an anesthesiologist present to ensure that Morales was unconscious; or a stay of execution pending a hearing. The prison authorities selected the second approach.

Early Tuesday, after the original execution was postponed, the warden of San Quentin, Steve Ornoski, announced that Morales would be put to death later in the day by a single dose of five grams of sodium pentathol, a barbiturate. Such a dose should quickly render him unconscious.

Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center said he found the confusion around the case troubling. "This seems to be cobbled together in short notice and without significant review," he said. "It's not absolutely essential that each person be executed on time, if there's this kind of uncertainty. I find it somewhat amazing that they could have a judge change the procedure and then change it again all while this person's not knowing even how he's going to be executed."

Defense attorneys also said that Fogel's approach had not received administrative, legal or medical reviews.

Morales was convicted of choking, bludgeoning, stabbing and raping Terri Winchell, a 17-year-old high-school senior from Lodi. He admitted that he had conspired with Rick Ortega, his cousin, to kill Winchell after she began dating Ortega's lover. Ortega is serving a life sentence.

Morales, who was a gang member and drug user at the time of the crime, has since expressed remorse. He has embraced religion and resumed this studies.

Public support for the death penalty has steadily declined in the United States, from 80 percent in 1994 to 64 percent last October, according to a Gallup Poll.

Since the 1990s, the number of people sentenced to death each year in California has fallen by nearly 40 percent, despite a recent cluster of executions. Morales was the fifth inmate denied clemency by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he would be the first Latino put to death since the state resumed executions in 1992.

More than 640 people are on California's death row.


WASHINGTON The refusal of two California anesthesiologists to take part in the execution by lethal injection Tuesday of a murderer and rapist raised new questions about the dominant method of carrying out the death penalty in the United States.

Michael Angelo Morales had been scheduled to die at one minute after midnight Tuesday for the brutal murder in 1981 of a 17-year-old girl who was dating the boyfriend of Morales's jealous bisexual cousin.

The doctors, whose names have not been made public, were to have certified that a drug administered to Morales had rendered him unconscious before two other chemicals were administered to kill him.

Their role was the result of the defense attorneys' appeal to a federal judge that death by injection could cause pain that transgressed the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment." The doctors' refusal precipitated hours of confusion. Finally, the execution was postponed to late in the day.

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