MISSOURI, USA. JUDGE FAULTS STATE EXECUTION PROTOCOL, HALTS EXECUTIONS

July 26, 2006: the state's revised plan for conducting lethal injections still falls short of ensuring they are conducted humanely, according to US District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. who halted Missouri's executions.
Gaitan cited "numerous problems" when he stopped executions June 26. Among them, he said the state needed a board-certified anesthesiologist to ensure the lethal injection procedure used posed no risk of unnecessary pain and suffering. The state was unable to find an anaesthesiologist willing to participate and wanted to use another physician, a nurse or a pharmacist to prepare the drugs used to put inmates to death. That proposal "is an improvement over the current procedure," Gaitan wrote on July 25. "However, there continue to be inadequacies with the personnel required to monitor and oversee" the death penalty.
"Missouri's current lethal injection procedure subjects condemned inmates to an unnecessary risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering," he wrote. The legal challenge to the state's death penalty was brought on behalf of Michael A. Taylor, who was sentenced to death for the 1989 rape and killing of a 15-year-old girl.
Taylor's attorneys argue the drug combination used to execute Missouri prisoners is unconstitutionally cruel punishment. Taylor's appeal will now go before the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals. (Sources: The Associated Press, 26/07/2006)