Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Politics

Gov. Bush halts executions

By CHRIS TISCH
Published December 16, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush has once again suspended all executions in Florida after an autopsy showed needles tore through an inmate's veins Wednesday night, causing chemicals to severely burn his flesh.

Angel Diaz took 34 minutes to die, an unusually long time, because the drugs weren't circulating in his blood.

Corrections officials initially attributed Diaz's slow death to liver disease, but the preliminary autopsy results showed no outward signs of damage to the organ.

The problems prompted Bush to form a four-person team to investigate the execution. On Friday, Bush ordered the assembly of a second team to study whether the lethal injection protocols used in Florida should be revised.

Friday likely will go down as a landmark day in death penalty history, legal experts said.

"I think you can almost say at this point that the Diaz case has changed the implementation, if not the existence, of the death penalty in the state of Florida," said Charles Rose, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law. "I will hazard a prediction that we will not put people to death in Florida by the same fashion again."

Bush issued a short statement saying he looked forward to the commission's "expeditious review" of the lethal injection procedures.

During a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon, Dr. William Hamilton, who performed the Diaz autopsy, declined to comment on whether Diaz might have felt pain during the execution.

Whether Diaz felt pain is important. If he did, his death could have violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Department of Corrections Secretary James McDonough said all members of the execution team who were in the room with Diaz have indicated that Diaz did not appear to be in pain and went to sleep.

"There was no moaning, no groaning," McDonough said. "All the indications were a man at rest."

But several observers in a witness room, including a St. Petersburg Times reporter, saw Diaz grimace, squint, wince and cough for 24 minutes before he became still.

"It sounds like the DOC employees were at a different execution than the witnesses," said veteran death penalty lawyer Martin McClain.

Inmates put to death usually stop moving within a few minutes and are pronounced dead within a quarter-hour. But it took more than twice that long and an additional dose of the drugs to kill Diaz, who was condemned for a 1979 Miami murder.

At first, corrections officials said Diaz's liver disease slowed the effect of the drugs. But several doctors interviewed by the Times disagreed. Diaz appears to have had hepatitis, but his liver did not show any outward signs of damage, Hamilton said.

Doctors weigh in

D. Todd Doss, a death penalty defense lawyer who represents Diaz's family, said the public shouldn't believe any statements by DOC officials that Diaz's death was painless.

"They are misrepresenting the facts. They lied about the liver disease," Doss said. "They have given us no reason whatsoever to believe them."

Of two doctors interviewed by the Times on Friday, one said Diaz might have felt pain during the execution, while the second said Diaz almost certainly felt pain.

"One can only assume that it was horrifically painful," said Dr. Jonathan Groner, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University who has testified in death penalty cases.

Florida's lethal injection protocol calls for the use of a three-drug cocktail. The first drug given is a barbiturate that, when released into tissue instead of the blood stream, causes pain and discomfort, said Dr. David Varlotta, a Tampa anesthesiologist.

The third drug in the cocktail causes severe, burning pain and can destroy skin and flesh.

"What they did to this man was torture," Groner said. "And even though people may not like him for what he did, Florida has a constitutional obligation not to torture him."

It's unclear how the needle used to administer the drugs, which is actually a plastic catheter, ended up in Diaz's flesh and not his veins.

McDonough said he believes the needle could have ripped through the vein when the drugs started pumping, but Hamilton and Groner said it likely was earlier than that. The needles were inserted by a nurse who has experience in several executions, DOC officials said.

The drugs left 23 inches of chemical burns on Diaz's arms.

Troubled history

Bush's suspension of executions is another stumble for a death penalty system that has been troubled for decades.

Florida discontinued the electric chair in 2000 after inmates bled and caught fire. Diaz was the 20th inmate to die from lethal injection, which is currently used by all but one of the 38 death penalty states. It has been the subject of vigorous challenges in several states.

"Florida got away from the electric chair because it was burning the inmates. And here we are still burning the inmates," Groner said.

Bush also stopped executions for much of this year while a lethal injection appeal was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Shortly after Bush's announcement on Friday, a federal judge in California also imposed a moratorium on that state's executions by declaring lethal injection to be "an undue and unnecessary risk" of violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Some experts say these stops show the death penalty is more trouble than its worth. Florida has averaged less than three executions per year in Bush's time as governor, while death row has swelled to 374 people.

Maintaining a death row and funding the appeals inmates are afforded cost millions more than imprisoning them for life, studies have shown.

The commission that will study Florida's lethal injection protocols will have 11 members: five appointed by the governor, three by the attorney general and one each by the senate president, the house speaker and the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. At least one of the members must be an attorney with extensive death penalty defense experience.

The commission must submit a preliminary report of findings and recommendations by Feb. 1 and a final report a month later. The commission can focus only on lethal injection procedures.

"Now is the crucial time," said Rose, the Stetson law professor. "Is the review going to be a true review? Or will it be an attempt to justify what has happened? At a minimum, it is going to change procedures, if not law, in the state of Florida."

Times staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report. Chris Tisch can be reached at tisch@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 16, 2006, 00:28:52]