•
Corrections department did not reveal drug’s intended use
• ‘Had we
known we never would have done it’
• Arizona
inmate was injected 15 times
theguardian.com,
Amanda Holpuch in New York, Saturday 9
August 2014
A Louisiana hospital unknowingly provided the state’s department of corrections with a drug used for lethal injections, it was revealed this week.
This 2008 file photo shows the gurney in Huntsville, Texas, on which the condemned receive a lethal dose of drugs. Photograph: Pat Sullivan/AP |
A Louisiana hospital unknowingly provided the state’s department of corrections with a drug used for lethal injections, it was revealed this week.
The
Louisiana department of corrections purchased 20 vials of hydromorphone from
Lake Charles Memorial hospital a week before the scheduled execution of
Christopher Sepulvado, but did not inform the hospital of its intended use for
the drug, according to a report by non-profit news group the Lens. The same
report noted that the purchase was revealed in a document provided by the state
in a lawsuit challenging its lethal-injection practice.
Sepulvado’s
execution had been scheduled for 5 February, but was delayed and has not been
rescheduled. Sepulvado was convicted of murdering his six-year-old stepson in
1993. Prosecutors said he beat the boy with a screwdriver before putting him in
scalding water.
“We assumed
the drug was for one of their patients, so we sent it. We did not realise what
the focus was,” Ulysses Gene Thibodeaux, a board member for the private,
non-profit hospital, told the Lens. Thibodeaux is also chief judge of the third
circuit court of appeal but did not preside over the case linked to the
execution drugs.
“Had we
known of the real use we never would have done it.”
Medical
experts said the request would not seem that unusual to the hospital, because
hydromorphone is used to minimise patient suffering and hospital pharmacies
frequently provide drugs to other pharmacies, including those in the prison
system.
Louisiana
was unable to obtain pentobarbital, a drug used in its usual cocktail for
lethal injections. It then approved another method for executions using a
combination of hydromorphone and midazolam.
States have
found it increasingly difficult to acquire lethal injection drugs since
manufacturers, mostly based in Europe, began to withdraw supplies because of
their opposition to capital punishment.
The mixture
of hydromorphone and midazolam was first used in January in Ohio’s execution of
Dennis McGuire, which lasted nearly 30 minutes. Eyewitnesses said McGuire
gasped for breath for at least 10 minutes while making attempts to sit up on
the gurney.
It was also
used in April in Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett, which lasted
about 43 minutes. The White House said that execution “fell short of humane
standards”.
Last month
the mixture was used in Arizona, in the execution of Joseph Wood, who according
to a court filing was seen to be “gasping and snorting” after he was injected.
It subsequently emerged that Wood had been injected 15 times during the nearly
two hours it took him to die.
The
attorney general, Eric Holder, subsequently said he was “greatly troubled” by
the spate of botched executions.
Information
about how the Louisiana department of corrections obtained hydromorphone is
sealed but, along with Thibodeaux’s claims, the Lens saw a document confirming
the source of the drug.
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