Kenny Richie
As I walked along the long corridor the sun shone pleasantly through the windows. It was almost easy to forget where I was. As I got closer, I could see the writing above the heavy grey door. I gave an involuntary shiver. I remember thinking how unsettling it must be to see it every day. Then realised, for those inside, they would read the words ‘Death Row’ only once.
I was in Ohio to interview a Scot stuck on death row. Twice Kenny Richie was prepared for execution. He’d had his head shaved. He ordered his final meal. Only for the process to be delayed. Given the doubts about his conviction, the international outcry about his case, Richie was eventually freed after a plea deal. He spent 21 years on death row. I spent only a few hours and the memory sticks with me still.
The death penalty in the US was put on hold back in 1972 when the Supreme Court ruled that it could be considered ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ and therefore against the constitution. But then a number of states reviewed and rewrote their laws, and capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976. Just six months later Gary Gilmore was killed by firing squad in Utah. But now the death penalty in the US is under threat once more.
There is the financial argument. Each death penalty case costs around a million dollars more than similar cases where execution is not on the table. There is the argument that it really is not a deterrent. A 2009 study by the University of Colorado concluded: ‘The consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment’.
There is the claim that the death penalty targets the poor, who can’t afford a decent defence team, and African Americans. In the US, African Americans make up 13% of the prison population, but almost 50% of those on death row. More than 140 men have been released from death row since 1973 after it was revealed they were wrongly convicted. And support for the death penalty in the US has dropped significantly.
Since 2007, seven states have repealed it. Thirty-one retain it, but governors have put a hold on executions in four of those and most others haven’t executed anyone in years. Only seven states have carried out executions in the past two years. But even more than that, Britain and the rest of Europe is squeezing the life out of lethal injections.
The process works like this. Sodium thiopental is injected to kill the pain. Pancurium bromide induces paralysis. Potassium chloride stops the heart. The execution is complete. The three drug protocol was put forward in 1977 by Jay Chapman, an Oklahoma medical examiner with little pharmacology experience.
In January 2011, American drug company Hospira stopped manufacturing sodium thiopental because it wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be used in lethal injections. The drug was to kill the pain, part of the three drug cocktail used in execution. But part of the reason for the change was the decision to move manufacturing the drug from the USA to Italy. And if it was used in executions, it could fall foul of the EU ‘torture regulation’ which bans the export of anything that could be used for capital punishment or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Since then, following restrictions introduced by Vince Cable in the UK, eight more barbiturates have been added to the EU list.
Many states had stockpiled some of the drugs required, but they are now running low or are getting close to their expiry date. And that’s led states to consider other options. In March, 2011, Georgia had its last supplies of sodium thiopental taken by federal authorities on the grounds they had imported them without a proper licence. They bought the drug from Dream Pharma, which was a distributor working out of the back of a London driving school. The Obama administration formally asked the Germans in the same year if it could help with the shortage. The Germans refused and then banned any German companies selling the drug to US prisons. A plan by Missouri to use the anesthetic propofol – the drug linked to Michael Jackson’s death – was quickly withdrawn. In July, $27,000 worth of sodium thiopental was seized after Arizona officials tried to import it.
Some states have tried to alter the three drug cocktail. In January 2014 Oklahoma inmate Michael Lee Wilson reportedly told witnesses during his execution he could feel his ‘whole body burning’. In Arizona an execution which should have taken 10 minutes took almost two hours, with convicted killer Joseph Wood gasping throughout. And in Oklahoma, prison staff failed several times to find a suitable vein to inject drugs into Clayton Lockett and the execution was halted. He died of a heart attack moments later. The lack of drugs prompted by the EU ban has forced two states to consider using firing squads when drugs are not available. Virginia wanted to bring back the electric chair, but that proposal didn’t make it out of committee.
In the end, there are many states who won’t back down and certainly won’t change policy under European pressure. If they can’t use drugs, they will find a way to kill their death row prisoners: they’ll hang them, or shoot them or gas them. But the words ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ hang over every procedure. And with every botched execution it becomes harder to justify.
Alan Fisher is a senior Al-Jazeera correspondent
By Alan Fisher | November 2015
