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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Ind. Decisions - Still more on: Federal Judge allows Timberlake execution, but has not yet ruled on lethal injection issue [Updated]

Updating this ILB entry from yesterday, the Indianapolis Star has this brief item this morning:

A U.S. District Court judge will hear arguments next week in a lawsuit challenging the scheduled execution of Norman Timberlake.

Judge Richard L. Young has scheduled a bench trial at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Timberlake's lawsuit argues the chemicals and process used by Indiana in lethal injections creates a risk that he will feel unnecessary pain during the execution.

He is scheduled to die just after midnight Jan. 19 for the 1993 murder of Indiana State Police Master Trooper Michael E. Greene during a traffic stop on I-65 in Indianapolis.

Earlier this week, Young ruled against Timberlake in a separate suit asking for a stay of execution because the inmate is mentally ill. Timberlake also has requested clemency from Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Meanwhile, today's Missouri papers have several stories on a challenge to the lethal injection process in their federal courts. This AP story reports:
ST. LOUIS - A federal appeals panel Wednesday questioned whether a judge intruded too far in state affairs by requiring certain reforms to Missouri's lethal injection procedures.

The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said requiring the Corrections Department to sign death logs on executed prisoners might be construed as "micromanaging."

U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. had ordered the reforms to Missouri's lethal injection procedures, including the use of a doctor specializing in anesthesia.

The attorney for condemned killer Michael Taylor, who came within hours of being executed in February, argued Wednesday that the state can't be trusted to carry out executions humanely without federal oversight. * * *

Gaitan initially required the state to have a board-certified anesthesiologist oversee executions, but the American Society of Anesthesiologists fiercely opposed the order.

The panel that heard the case Wednesday did not indicate when it might rule.

The lethal injection debate centers on how three drugs are administered in succession. Opponents say they can constitute cruel and unusual punishment if given improperly.

Missouri is among nine states that have put executions on hold as they grapple with whether lethal injection is inhumane.

A story on the same Court of Appeals hearing appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts a different light on the issues. The report begins:
Missouri corrections officials came under heavy fire from a condemned inmate's lawyers Wednesday and some pointed questioning by federal appeals judges considering whether to allow the state to resume executions.

Judge William Jay Riley said the state's lawyers initially misrepresented the execution procedures to both a lower court and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments in St. Louis.

A decision may be months away.

Judge David R. Hansen asked James Layton of the Missouri attorney general's office whether state officials could now be trusted to implement revised procedures imposed after problems were revealed.

he changes have already been made, Layton responded, saying there "is simply no basis" to question whether Department of Corrections Director Larry Crawford will properly supervise execution staff.

Layton said Crawford had been unaware of problems until the issue "exploded" with the case of Michael A. Taylor.

The death penalty has in effect been on hold since last year, when lawyers for Taylor, on death row for the 1989 slaying of a teenage girl in Kansas City, argued that the lethal injection process could pose unconstitutionally cruel pain.

Taylor's suit revealed that the corrections director was not fully aware of the procedure, and didn't know that the physician in charge —called Joe Doe in court documents but identified by the Post-Dispatch as Dr. Alan Doerhoff — decided on his own to halve the amount of sedative that begins the lethal three-drug cocktail. The first drug shields the condemned person from potential pain of the other two.

Doerhoff admitted in a hearing last year that he is dyslexic and sometimes makes mistakes mixing drugs. The Post-Dispatch revealed that he has been reprimanded by the state Board of Healing Arts and denied staff privileges by two hospitals. The state has refused to bar him from doing more executions.

[Thanks to How Appealing for the Missouri links.]

[Updated] Tom Coyne of the AP reports today:

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Norman Timberlake, a New Albany man condemned to die Jan. 19 for killing a state trooper, has asked the state Supreme Court to delay his execution until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a similar case regarding a mentally ill Texas man.

Timberlake's request contends the state should not be allowed to execute him until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Scott Louis Panetti, who killed his estranged wife's parents in 1992, should be spared the death penalty because he has suffered from severe mental illness for 25 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1986 that executions of the insane are unconstitutional.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Lewis Powell concluded that "the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution only of those who are unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it."

But in the Panetti case, his lawyers argue that "awareness" is not synonymous with "rational understanding."

Timberlake's attorney, Brent Westerfeld, said the same argument stands for his client.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 11, 2007 08:43 AM
Posted to Ind Fed D.Ct. Decisions