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Executions at a standstill

Amid review, none was carried out in the U.S. in October, but Florida has one coming up.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 1, 2007

WASHINGTON - For the first time in nearly three years, a month passed with no executions in the United States.

No death sentences were carried out in October, as judges and elected officials effectively halted executions after the Supreme Court's decision to rule on lethal injection procedures in a case from Kentucky.

The last month with no inmate put to death was December 2004.

On Tuesday, the high court halted an execution in Mississippi. The reprieve for Earl Wesley Berry, minutes before he was scheduled to die, was the third granted by the justices since they agreed in late September to hear the Kentucky case.

The result of the delays: fewer executions in 2007 - 42 to date - than in any year since 1994.

Kentucky's method of lethal injection is similar to execution procedures in three dozen states, including Florida.

Florida has not had an execution since December, when it took twice as long as normal for Angel Diaz to die because toxic chemicals were injected into his soft tissue, not his vein. Witnesses said Diaz appeared to wrench in pain.

Still, the only execution that has not been formally called off this year is in Florida, where Mark Dean Schwab is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Nov. 15. The state Supreme Court is considering a request to stop it.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the mix of three drugs used to sedate and kill prisoners and the way they are administered have the potential to cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Arguments in the case will take place early next year, and a decision should come by late June.

Even in Texas, the nation's leader in executions, prosecutors have decided to await the outcome of the Supreme Court case rather than setting execution dates and pressing forward through the courts.

"It seems the common-sense thing to do at this point," said Roe Wilson, who handles death penalty appeals for the Harris County District Attorney's Office in Houston. Harris County sends more inmates to death row than any other county in Texas.

The Supreme Court has allowed only one execution to go forward since agreeing to hear the Kentucky case. Michael Richard was executed in Texas on Sept. 25, the same day the court said it would hear the lethal injection challenge.

Information from St. Petersburg Times reports was used.

[Last modified November 1, 2007, 00:21:45]