Nevertheless, the extent of the records disclosed from DOC included a two
page invoice, the April 21, 2008 lethal injection procedures with a memo
requesting the then Secretary?s signature, the June 8, 2011 lethal injection
procedures, two drafts dated December 29, 2010 of the lethal injection procedures
reflecting a change from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital, a legal memorandum
on the state of lethal injection litigation across the country, and blank copies of all
execution checklists and other materials used by the execution team, during training sessions and during an execution. This was by no means the entirety of
Mr. Valle?s request.
Sabtu, 30 Juli 2011
Records DOC denied to disclose
The Department of Corrections was required to produce 57 pages of records
which it had previously agreed to provide to a private attorney pursuant to Fla.
Stat. §119, but which the DOC repeatedly objected to providing to death sentenced
inmates represented by CCRC-South.
which it had previously agreed to provide to a private attorney pursuant to Fla.
Stat. §119, but which the DOC repeatedly objected to providing to death sentenced
inmates represented by CCRC-South.
Jumat, 29 Juli 2011
Paul Flemming: Drug debate puts execution on hold
Paul Flemming
Harvard medical school professors, Danish pharmaceutical companies, four members of the Florida Supreme Court and attorneys for condemned cop killer Manuel Valle are poking their collective noses into the state of Florida's business, namely its — and our — business of death.
As a result, Valle won't be executed Tuesday as scheduled by the death warrant Gov. Rick Scott signed in June.
The Florida Supreme Court on Monday stayed Valle's death sentence and ordered an evidentiary hearing about the efficacy of pentobarbital to knock him unconscious so he doesn't feel the effects of the next two drugs his executioners would administer to paralyze him and stop his heart.
Justices Barbara Pariente, Peggy Quince, Jorge Labarga and James Perry voted to stay Valle's execution, writing that a report from Dr. David Waisel, a pediatric anesthesiologist and associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School included in Valle's lawyer's arguments, merited a further look at pentobarbital, a new drug in Florida's execution process.
Dissenting were Chief Justice Charles Canady and Justices Fred Lewis and Ricky Polston. "Based on speculation and conjecture, Valle claims the right to judicial micromanagement of the execution process," Canady wrote in the dissenting opinion.
An evidentiary hearing began in Miami on Thursday. The question will end up back before the state's high court.
Florida's use of pentobarbital is new. Previously, Florida used sodium thiopental as the first drug. But the maker of sodium thiopental stopped doing so. Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss approved new protocols for lethal injection, including pentobarbital, on June 8.
Staffan Schüberg, president of Lundbeck Inc., the manufacturer of pentobarbital with the brand name Nembutal, wrote to Scott on May 16 and June 8 and also sent a June 8 letter to Buss.
"We are adamantly opposed to the use of Nembutal to execute prisoners because it contradicts everything we are in business to do — provide therapies that improve people's lives," Schuberg wrote in his May 16 letter to Scott.
Schüberg admits there's nothing he can do to stop the state of Florida.
Of the 30 states that use lethal injection for executions, a number have already switched to pentobarbital after supplies of sodium thiopental went away. Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia have executed prisoners this year using pentobarbital as part of lethal injections.
The three drugs — to anesthetize, paralyze and kill — have been sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court as constitutional. The combination is used by so many states because to vary the procedure would invite further court review. The magical mix was developed essentially by chance in 1977 by Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, Jay Chapman, according to years of litigation about the procedures.
The states, including Florida, argue the procedure is designed to provide a humane and pain-free death for the condemned. Death sentences are carried out with the antiseptic regimentation of a government bureaucracy that also make for a less messy and disturbing experience for executioners and witnesses.
Lethal injection became the first option for Florida executions in 2000, following a series of grisly fires and unseemly writhing by the condemned who died in the still-optional electric chair.
State-sponsored executions are going away. This is not a subjective hope, it is an objective fact, as fewer and fewer death sentences are carried out in the United States, itself an outlier in the community of nations. Not this year, not this decade even, probably, but it's slipping toward its inevitable end. The more we take ourselves away from the reality of state-sponsored death with debates about the efficacy of anesthesia, the more self-evidently ludicrous the arguments become and unsupportable its practice.
This societal evolution is evident.
Did the power company ever object to the state's using its electricity for unintended purposes?
— Paul Flemming is the state editor for the Tallahassee Democrat and floridacapitalnews.com. Contact him at pflemming@tallahassee.com or 850-671-6550.
Examine lethal-injection procedures, legislator says
Examine lethal-injection procedures, legislator says
Friday, July 29, 2011 03:05 AM
By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
Rep. W. Carlton Weddington, a Columbus Democrat, asked Gov. John Kasich on Monday to take a close look at execution procedures in line with a recent court decision and resulting delays.
"I am concerned that now, after the second delayed execution, Gov. Kasich and Director (Gary) Mohr have not done more to address this very sensitive issue," Weddington said in a statement. "The citizens of Ohio need justice that is fair and balanced but also humane and cost-effective. Today, I raise the question of, is lethal injection the right form of justice, and how do we administer it in the best possible way?"
Weddington is a member of the House Criminal Justice Committee and the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee.
Two scheduled executions have been postponed because of a federal judge's decision calling Ohio's adherence to its execution procedures "haphazard."
US justices let Florida stay of execution stand
Posted: 10:11 a.m. Friday, July 29, 2011
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to lift a stay of execution ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.
The federal justices Friday rejected a request by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to vacate the stay for Manuel Valle.
The 61-year-old convict had been scheduled for execution by lethal injection next Tuesday for fatally shooting a Coral Gables police officer 33 years ago.
The Florida justices, though, stayed the execution and ordered a Miami judge to hold a fact-finding hearing on a change in the state's lethal injection procedure.
That hearing begin Thursday and will continue next week.
It focuses on the safety and effectiveness of a new chemical that Florida plans to use as part of its three-drug lethal injection cocktail.
The new drug replaces one that's no longer made.
___
July 29, 2011 10:11 AM EDT
Capital punishment has drug problem, will eventually die
Capital punishment has drug problem, will eventually die
— Paul Flemming is the state editor for the Tallahassee Democrat and floridacapitalnews.com. You can reach him at pflemming@tallahassee.com or 850-671-6550.
Harvard Medical School professors, Danish pharmaceutical companies, four members of the Florida Supreme Court and attorneys for condemned cop killer Manuel Valle are poking their collective noses into the state of Florida’s business, namely its — and our — business of death.
As a result, Valle won't be executed Tuesday as scheduled by the death warrant Gov. Rick Scott signed in June.
The Florida Supreme Court stayed Valle’s death sentence last Monday and ordered an evidentiary hearing about the efficacy of pentobarbital to knock him unconscious so he doesn’t feel the effects of the next two drugs his executioners would administer to paralyze him and stop his heart.
Justices Barbara Pariente, Peggy Quince, Jorge Labarga and James Perry voted to stay Valle’s execution, writing that a report from Dr. David Waisel, a pediatric anesthesiologist and associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School included in Valle’s lawyer’s arguments, merited a further look at pentobarbital, a new drug in Florida’s execution process.
Dissenting were Chief Justice Charles Canady and Justices Fred Lewis and Ricky Polston. “Based on speculation and conjecture, Valle claims the right to judicial micromanagement of the execution process,” Canady wrote in the dissenting opinion.
An evidentiary hearing was held in Miami on Thursday. The question will end up back before the state’s high court.
Florida’s use of pentobarbital is new. Previously, Florida used sodium thiopental as the first drug. But the state’s supplier of sodium thiopental stopped manufacturing it. Corrections Secretary Ed Buss approved new protocols for lethal injection, including pentobarbital, June 8.
Staffan Schuberg, president of Lundbeck Inc., the manufacturer of pentobarbital with the brand name Nembutal, wrote to Scott on May 16 and June 8 and also sent a June 8 letter to Buss.
“We are adamantly opposed to the use of Nembutal to execute prisoners because it contradicts everything we are in business to do — provide therapies that improve people’s lives,” Schuberg wrote in his May 16 letter to Scott.
Schuberg admits there’s nothing he can do to stop the state of Florida.
Of the 30 states that use lethal injection for executions, a number have already switched to pentobarbital after supplies of sodium thiopental went away. Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia have executed prisoners this year using pentobarbital as part of lethal injections.
Those three drugs — to anesthetize, paralyze and kill — have been sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court as constitutional. It’s used by so many states because to vary the procedure would invite further court review. The magical mix was developed essentially by chance by Oklahoma’s chief medical examiner in 1977, Jay Chapman, according to years of litigation about the procedures.
Though states, including Florida, argue the procedure is designed to provide a humane and pain-free death for the condemned. Death sentences are carried out with the antiseptic regimentation of a government bureaucracy that also makes for a less messy and disturbing experience for executioners and witnesses.
Lethal injection became the first option for Florida executions in 2000, following a series of electric-chair-caused fires and unseemly writhing by the condemned.
State-sponsored executions are going away. This is not a hope, it is an objective fact as fewer and fewer death sentences are carried out in the United States, itself an outlier in the community of nations. Not this year, not this decade even, probably, but it’s slipping toward its inevitable end. The more we take ourselves away from the reality of state-sponsored death with debates about the efficacy of anesthesia, the more self-evidently ludicrous the arguments become and unsupportable its practice
This societal evolution is evident.
Did the power company ever object to the state using its electricity for unintended purposes?
Lethal injection drug hearing to continue next week
Posted on Thursday, 07.28.11
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Lethal injection drug hearing to continue next week
A Miami judge began hearing testimony on the safety of pentobarbital, an anesthetic intended to be used in the scheduled execution of man who shot and killed a Coral Gables cop in 1978.
By Patricia Mazzei
pmazzei@MiamiHerald.com
A hearing that began Thursday morning on the new use of an anesthetic drug in Florida’s legal injections will continue next week, after a Miami judge decided that scientists for both sides should testify in person and via video conference on Tuesday.
The hearing stems from the case of Manuel Valle, sentenced to death for shooting and killing Coral Gables Police Officer Louis Pena in 1978. Valle’s execution, initially set for Aug. 2, was temporarily stayed by the Florida Supreme Court on Monday until Sept. 1, pending a hearing on the safety and efficacy of the drug in question, pentobarbital.
The defense’s expert witness on the drug was unable to be in Miami before Tuesday, when the judge was scheduled to be on vacation. The prosecution’s expert could have testified by phone Thursday, but Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola — apparently postponing her vacation — said she would be more comfortable seeing the witness’s face by video to establish his credibility. That expert will testify Tuesday, too.
A quiet but alert Valle, 61, appeared in court Thursday, handcuffed, carrying a bulky file and wearing orange-and-blue prison garb and thick glasses that slid down his nose.
He turned occasionally to look at family members seated in the courtroom and spoke only halfway through the proceedings, when his lawyer told the judge Valle preferred to go back to Florida State Prison in Starke than to sit through the remainder of the hearing through Tuesday.
Do you want to go now, or wait until the end of the day?, the judge asked him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Valle said, turning to the gaggle of corrections officers sitting behind him. “If you guys want to go…”
That prompted laughter from the judge, lawyers and observers in the courtroom, and a smile from Valle, who was allowed to go.
“Thank you, your honor,” he said.
His family and the victim’s family, many of whom had driven over from Fort Myers Thursday morning, remained. A contingent of Coral Gables police officers left.
The judge listened to testimony — by phone and in person — from people who have witnessed lethal-injection executions using pentobarbital in other states.
Valle would be the first Florida inmate to be executed with the drug. His defense has raised questions as to whether the drug in the amount prescribed by the state could cause him pain and constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Testifying for the defense, a federal public defender, described the June 16 execution in Alabama of Eddie Duval Powell. The witness, Matt Schulz, said by phone that Powell jerked up, clenched his jaw and looked confused for about a minute before passing out and later dying.
On the other side, John Harper, an employee of the Georgia Department of Corrections, described the June 23 execution in that state of Roy Blankenship — expected to come up when the defense’s expert takes the stand next week — as relatively non-eventful.
The Florida Department of Corrections signed off last month on using pentobarbital, a barbiturate, to sedate inmates before a second drug paralyzes them and a third stops their heart.
The state had to switch sedatives after the Illinois pharmaceutical company that sold it the previous drug, sodium thiopental, discontinued the production of it because it did not want the drug used in executions.
The defense on Thursday admitted into evidence four letters sent to the state by Lundbeck, the Danish company that manufactures the pentobarbital, urging Florida not to use the drug for capital punishment.
“The use of pentobarbital outside the approved labeling has not been established,” Staffan Schüberg, Lundbeck’s president, wrote Gov. Rick Scott. “As such, Lundbeck cannot assure the associated safety and efficacy profiles in such instances. For this reason, we are concerned about its use in prison executions.”
Herald/Times staff writer Michael C. Bender contributed to this report.
The hearing stems from the case of Manuel Valle, sentenced to death for shooting and killing Coral Gables Police Officer Louis Pena in 1978. Valle’s execution, initially set for Aug. 2, was temporarily stayed by the Florida Supreme Court on Monday until Sept. 1, pending a hearing on the safety and efficacy of the drug in question, pentobarbital.
The defense’s expert witness on the drug was unable to be in Miami before Tuesday, when the judge was scheduled to be on vacation. The prosecution’s expert could have testified by phone Thursday, but Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola — apparently postponing her vacation — said she would be more comfortable seeing the witness’s face by video to establish his credibility. That expert will testify Tuesday, too.
A quiet but alert Valle, 61, appeared in court Thursday, handcuffed, carrying a bulky file and wearing orange-and-blue prison garb and thick glasses that slid down his nose.
He turned occasionally to look at family members seated in the courtroom and spoke only halfway through the proceedings, when his lawyer told the judge Valle preferred to go back to Florida State Prison in Starke than to sit through the remainder of the hearing through Tuesday.
Do you want to go now, or wait until the end of the day?, the judge asked him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Valle said, turning to the gaggle of corrections officers sitting behind him. “If you guys want to go…”
That prompted laughter from the judge, lawyers and observers in the courtroom, and a smile from Valle, who was allowed to go.
“Thank you, your honor,” he said.
His family and the victim’s family, many of whom had driven over from Fort Myers Thursday morning, remained. A contingent of Coral Gables police officers left.
The judge listened to testimony — by phone and in person — from people who have witnessed lethal-injection executions using pentobarbital in other states.
Valle would be the first Florida inmate to be executed with the drug. His defense has raised questions as to whether the drug in the amount prescribed by the state could cause him pain and constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Testifying for the defense, a federal public defender, described the June 16 execution in Alabama of Eddie Duval Powell. The witness, Matt Schulz, said by phone that Powell jerked up, clenched his jaw and looked confused for about a minute before passing out and later dying.
On the other side, John Harper, an employee of the Georgia Department of Corrections, described the June 23 execution in that state of Roy Blankenship — expected to come up when the defense’s expert takes the stand next week — as relatively non-eventful.
The Florida Department of Corrections signed off last month on using pentobarbital, a barbiturate, to sedate inmates before a second drug paralyzes them and a third stops their heart.
The state had to switch sedatives after the Illinois pharmaceutical company that sold it the previous drug, sodium thiopental, discontinued the production of it because it did not want the drug used in executions.
The defense on Thursday admitted into evidence four letters sent to the state by Lundbeck, the Danish company that manufactures the pentobarbital, urging Florida not to use the drug for capital punishment.
“The use of pentobarbital outside the approved labeling has not been established,” Staffan Schüberg, Lundbeck’s president, wrote Gov. Rick Scott. “As such, Lundbeck cannot assure the associated safety and efficacy profiles in such instances. For this reason, we are concerned about its use in prison executions.”
Herald/Times staff writer Michael C. Bender contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/28/2333679/judge-to-hold-hearing-on-new-use.html#ixzz1TUtNx0fC
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