Last-minute reprieve for California death row inmate

Morales was brought to the brink of death twice within the space of 18 hours before his state killing was called off. He spent a full day in the “death watch” cell, 15 feet from the execution chamber at San Quentin, before prison officials halted the execution and returned him to the death row cell he has occupied since his incarceration.

Michael Morales, 46, was sentenced to death for the brutal rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell in 1981. He admits to the crime, and says he was high on PCP at the time. As his February 21 execution date approached, he was running out of options. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Morales’s petition for clemency last Friday, and the US Supreme Court turned down a pair of appeals on Monday.

A week earlier, however, in response to arguments by Morales’s attorneys that California’s lethal-injection procedures constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” barred under the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that the state would have to modify them or halt the execution until a full hearing could be held on the process. California prison authorities worked to comply with the judge’s order and scheduled his execution for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

Lethal injection, the method used for execution in 37 of the 38 states practicing the death penalty, consists of a three-drug cocktail. First, the condemned inmate is injected with sodium thiopental, a barbiturate; next comes pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscle system and stops the person’s breathing; finally, a dose of potassium chloride stops the heart. Death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest.

Critics of the procedure argue that if the proper dose of sodium thiopental is not administered, the condemned can die an excruciating death as breathing and heartbeat are stopped. Judge Fogel ordered that the prison have two anesthesiologists on hand to advise the execution team if Morales woke up during the execution or appeared to suffer pain, and intervene with the administration of additional barbiturates.

The two unidentified anesthesiologists withdrew their agreement to monitor the execution just hours before midnight, and prison authorities called off the execution—for the first time—around 10 p.m. Monday. In a written statement Tuesday, the two doctors explained, “Any such intervention would clearly be unethical.”

Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), said, “I don’t know of any other case where a physician has sat through and ordered an increased drip or whatever. That seems to be participation in the execution.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/exec-f23.shtml