MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The number of botched lethal injections in Alabama, which worsened Thursday night when prison workers halted another execution because of a problem with IV lines, is unprecedented nationally, a group punishable by capital punishment.
The pending execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith was the second such case in which the state did not execute an inmate in the past two months and the third in 2018. The state completed an execution in July, but only after a three-hour delay caused by to at least in part the same problem of starting an IV line.
A leader of the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty group with a large database of executions, said no state other than Alabama has had to halt an execution in progress since 2017, when Ohio halted Alva Campbell’s lethal injection because workers could not fail to find a vein.
via the Associated Press
According to Ngozi Ndulue, deputy director of the Washington-based group, the only other lethal injection blocked before an inmate died was in Ohio in 2009.
“So Alabama has had more lethal injections stopped in recent years than the rest of the country overall,” he said. Something clearly went wrong with the state’s enforcement procedure, Ndulue said.
“I think Alabama clearly has some explaining to do, but also some thinking to do about what’s going wrong with its application process,” he said. “The question is whether Alabama will take it seriously.”
The Alabama Department of Corrections disputed that the cancellation was a reflection of the problems. In a statement, he blamed delayed legal action for the cancellation because prison officials “had a short deadline to finalize their protocol.”
Prison officials said they canceled Smith’s execution for the night after he failed to initiate the lethal injection within 100 minutes between the courts opening the way earlier and a midnight deadline when the death sentence expired for the day . The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Smith’s execution when, at about 10:20 p.m., it lifted a stay issued earlier in the day by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But the state decided about an hour later that the lethal injection would not take place that evening.
“We have no doubt about the state’s ability to conduct future lethal injection procedures,” the Alabama Department of Corrections said in an emailed statement.
“The department will continue to review its processes, as it routinely does after each execution, to identify areas for improvement.” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey also blamed Smith’s last-minute appeals as the reason “justice could not be served”
U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. on Friday granted a request from Smith’s attorneys to visit Smith and photograph the body. He also ordered the state to preserve notes and other materials related to what happened in the botched execution. Smith’s lawyers said they believed he may have been strapped to a gurney for four hours, although his final appeals were still pending.
“Mr. Smith undoubtedly has injuries from the attempted execution — and certainly physical evidence and testimony to be preserved — that can and should be photographed and/or videotaped,” Smith’s attorneys wrote.
Smith, who was to be sentenced to death for the 1988 slaying of a preacher’s wife, was taken to Holman Prison after surviving the attempt, a prison official said. His lawyers declined to comment Friday morning.
Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said prison staff tried for about an hour to connect the two IV lines Smith, 57, needed. Hamm said he established a line but was unsuccessful with a second line, which is required by state protocol as a backup. after trying different positions on Smith’s body.
Officials then tried a central line, which involves a catheter placed in a large vein. “We couldn’t find the time to complete it, so we canceled the race,” Hamm said.
The initial delay came after Smith’s most recent appeals focused on problems with IV lines in Alabama’s last two scheduled lethal injections. Since the death sentence expired at midnight, the state must return to court to request a new execution date.
Advocacy groups and defense attorneys have said the problems in Alabama point to the need for a moratorium on investigations into how the death penalty is administered in the state.
“Once again, the state of Alabama has demonstrated that it is unable to carry out this torture-free execution protocol,” federal defender John Palombi, who has represented many of the death row inmates, said by email.
Prosecutors said Smith was one of two men who were paid $1,000 each to kill Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on the insurance. The murder — and revelations about who was behind it — shook the small north Alabama community where it happened in Colbert County and inspired a song called “The Fireplace Poker” by the Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers.
John Forrest Parker, the other man convicted of murder, was executed in 2010.
Alabama has faced scrutiny over its recent problems with lethal injection. In the ongoing litigation, attorneys for the inmates are seeking information about the qualifications of the enforcement team members responsible for connecting the lines. In a hearing Thursday in Smith’s case, a federal judge asked the state how long it took to try to establish a line, noting that at least one state gives a one-hour time limit.
The start of Joe Nathan James Jr.’s execution in July took several hours because of problems setting up an IV line, prompting the Reprieve US Forensic Justice Initiative, an anti-death penalty group, to argue that the execution was botched.
In September, the state canceled Alan Miller’s scheduled execution because of difficulties accessing the veins. Miller said in a court filing that jail staff jabbed him with needles for more than an hour and at one point left him hanging vertically on a stretcher before announcing they were going to stop. Prison officials said the delays were a result of the state following procedures.
In 2018, Alabama canceled the execution of Doyle Hamm due to problems connecting the intravenous line. Hamm had veins damaged by lymphoma, hepatitis and drug use in the past, his lawyer said. Hamm later died in prison of natural causes.
Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama.
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