CALIFORNIA, USA. GUARDS BUNGLED WILLIAMS EXECUTION: OFFICIAL

September 26, 2006: a Californian official admitted that state prison guards had bungled the recent controversial execution of former gang leader Stanley Williams, but denied that lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general, spoke at the start of a four-day federal court hearing into whether lethal injection, the procedure used for executions in 37 US states, causes undue suffering.
Gillette cited the December 2005 failure to connect a back-up intravenous line to the left arm of Williams, a condemned killer and former Crips gang leader from Los Angeles who garnered global publicity after writing anti-gang books.
"Williams was a lesson well-learned that will not happen again," Gillette told Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose.
Guards typically attach two intravenous lines to condemned inmates, one as a back-up to assure the continuous flow of chemicals that anesthetize, paralyze and then kill. Witnesses saw the San Quentin staff struggle to insert the IV into Williams but officials at the time did not concede any problems had occurred. "That's the only instance that we know of," Gillette told Reuters during a court break. "That was the redundant arm ... (the IV) did not work."
In court Gillette said California's mix of drugs to render unconscious and then kill condemned inmates led to a "quick, painless death."
Lawyers for condemned California killer Michael Morales presented witnesses who had seen what they described as painful executions as well as medical experts to support its contention that that lethal injection is unconstitutional.
The California case is one of several nationwide in which courts are reviewing lethal injection. California has 655 people on its condemned inmate list, some of them there since the late 1970s. Their numbers are growing so steadily on Death Row at San Quentin north of San Francisco that penal officials are planning an expansion of the 154-year-old prison. (Sources: Reuters, 26/09/2006)