COLUMBIA, S.C. - For the second year in a row, South Carolina saw no executions in 2013. The state had no new death sentences in the last year, either.
It's a downward trend that mirrors national patterns that are moving away from putting inmates to death. In a report that came out this month, the Death Penalty Information Center said that fewer and fewer people are being executed nationwide.
Last year, 39 inmates were executed in a total of nine states, according to the report. That represents a drop of 10 percent from a year earlier.
At the end of June 2005, there were 72 people awaiting execution in South Carolina. Since then, there have been fewer than a dozen, and several inmates have left death row after winning appeals that ended in their sentences being overturned.
Forty-six inmates are on South Carolina's death row, all men who range in age from 30 to 69 years old, according to the state Department of Corrections.
South Carolina's last execution came in May 2011, when 36-year-old Jeffrey Motts was put to death by injection for strangling his cellmate. Motts was already serving a life sentence for a 1995 double murder when, according to prosecutors, he bound Charles "Chuck" Martin's arms and legs, tied him to the bottom bunk and choked him to death.
The first person executed in South Carolina in nearly two years, Motts was also the state's first prisoner executed using a new combination of drugs. South Carolina switched to pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental, a change made necessary after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized the state's supply of sodium thiopental.
The agency took the drug away from several states because of concerns that officials broke the law by buying doses from England, which banned the drug's export for executions.
South Carolina prosecutors had said they would pursue the death penalty in several cases last year. Some of those ended in plea deals that resulted in life sentences for the accused. In Beaufort County, a jury deliberated about two hours before sentencing Ernest Stewart Daise to life in prison for the 2009 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her 4-year-old son.
LEXINGTON COUNTY, SC (WIS) - A man who served 11 years on death row after being convicted of killing his girlfriend and their unborn child in 1993 has walked free after a jury decided last week that he did not intentionally kill them.
Joseph "Jody" Ard was released from the Lexington County Detention Center shortly before 6 p.m.
Ard found out he would be released from prison several hours ago. He had spent the last 7 years awaiting a retrial in the death of 17-year-old Madalyn Coffey and the 35-week-old fetus she was carrying.
Prosecutors convinced the jury that Ard shot Coffey intentionally. The fetus, according to the prosecution, died from lack of oxygen. Ard, on the other, hand, said that the .44 caliber gun went off accidentally during a struggle. There were no witnesses to the shooting.
Ard became the first South Carolinian to be sentenced to death for killing a fetus. Later that year, the state Supreme Court upheld that decision.
A new defense team continued working for Ard after the conviction. They found what they believed was a key piece of evidence that was not included in the first trial.
"They did it," Ard said in praise of his attorneys. "They fought for me hard and they cleared my name."
They brought the new evidence forward during a re-trial this month. The defense's core argument was that Coffey had gun residue on her hand, which pointed to the defense's theory that Coffey and Ard were fighting for the gun when it accidentally fired.
The prosecution chose not to seek the death penalty in this trial.
Kentucky officials signaled Thursday they will change how prisoners are executed, opening the door to using a single drug instead of the current 3-drug method that has been challenged by inmates who call it cruel and unusual punishment.
The Kentucky Justice Cabinet filed notice in Franklin Circuit Court that it would propose new regulations by July 24. The single-page motion does not say what changes will be made. The new method could be in place by late summer, allowing Kentucky to begin executions later this year.
Justice Cabinet spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin declined comment.
Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd in April gave Kentucky 90 days to make changes or face a trial to defend the three-drug method. Shepherd said if Kentucky adopts a new regulation allowing for a 1-drug execution — similar to what is done in Ohio, Arizona and other states — any claims of cruel and unusual punishment by the inmates "will be rendered moot."
The battle over Kentucky's lethal injection method has been going on for more than a year and a half. The judge's ruling and Kentucky's decision comes just months after the American Bar Association issued a report calling for a moratorium on executions in Kentucky, in part because of the number of cases overturned since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
At least 7 states use a single drug to carry out executions. 3 states — Idaho, Washington and South Dakota — give an option to use more than 1 drug. In the last week, Missouri became the 1st state to switch to propofol, the same anesthetic that caused the overdose death of pop star Michael Jackson.
Kentucky's current method calls for a single drug or combination of drugs. The state last used sodium thiopental, pancurionium bromide and potassium chloride, a combination similar to the one used by Georgia and some other states.
When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's 3-drug method in 2007, Shepherd wrote, a 1-drug method was still untested. That's no longer the case. Since then, states have successfully used a single drug for executions, creating what Shepherd called a safer alternative for lethal injections.
To change the regulations, Kentucky officials must submit to the state a new execution method, which is made public. If a legislative subcommittee does not meet or does not find the regulation deficient within 30 days of publication, the regulation takes effect.
The only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped making it in 2009 and dropped plans to resume production last year. Kentucky bought some doses from a foreign supplier, but the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration began seizing supplies over questions of whether the states broke the law to get it. Kentucky surrendered its supply in 2011.
In the meantime, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Ohio purchased another powerful sedative, pentobarbital, to carry out executions. Ohio and Arizona have carried out 1-drug executions. Other states allow it but haven't used the single drug for a lethal injection.
Shepherd's initial ruling halting all executions came as the state prepared to execute Gregory L. Wilson, 55, for the 1987 rape, kidnapping and murder of 36-year-old Debbie Pooley in Kenton County. Wilson has since won a hearing in state court on whether he is mentally disabled and ineligible for execution.
The appeals of at least 5 Kentucky death row inmates have run their course. They include 56-year-old Ralph Baze, awaiting execution for killing a sheriff and deputy; 6-time convicted killer Robert Foley; and Wilson, all of whom remain on death row at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville.
Kentucky last executed an inmate in 2008 and has executed 3 people since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976.
After spending 31 years — 29 of them on death row — incarcerated for murder, Edward Elmore was freed on March 3, in large part due to investigations undertaken by Cornell law students and professors on the Cornell Death Penalty Project Council.
The council –– which is directed by Prof. John H. Blume, law –– is comprised of a few Cornell law students who are selected to work on cases alongside Blume and other attorneys.
Elmore, now 54 years old, was convicted in 1982 for the murder of Dorothy Edwards. At the time, Edwards had hired Elmore to perform small tasks such as window-washing, gutter-fixing and cleaning.
Attorney Diana Holt, Blume’s co-council on several hearings of the case, said Jimmy Holloway –– Edwards’ neighbor and a possible suspect in the case –– discovered Edwards dead in a closet in her South Carolina home. She had been stabbed more than 50 times and sexually assaulted before she bled to death.
When Elmore was on death row, Cornell students and professors on the council helped prove that he was mentally retarded. Because the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 in Atkins v. Virginia that it is not legal to execute the mentally retarded, Elmore — who was shown, years after his conviction, to have an IQ ranging between 60 and 70 — was taken off of death row.
Blume and Holt said that the students faced complications in their investigation, which took them as far away as Elmore’s rural hometown of Abbeville, South Carolina.
Blume said that because of Elmore’s age — Elmore had not attended school in more than 35 years by the time students began working on the case — students had trouble locating Elmore’s school records and contacting his former teachers to testify about his mental disability.
Further complicating their efforts, Blume and Holt said, was that Elmore, an African American, may not have received a fair trial because of racial discrimination.
“[The] lawyers had their own racial biases — one of [the lawyers] referred to [Elmore] derogatorily as a ‘red-headed nigger,’” Blume said.
That discrimination may have contributed to the fact that crucial evidence in the case was obstructed for years, according to Holt.
In 1998, lawyers discovered that one of the forensic scientists for the state had hidden a critical piece of evidence in his filing cabinet drawer: 3 hairs that were found on Edwards’ naked abdomen, according to Holt.
A state forensic scientist had reported that the evidence was blue fiber, but it was several strands of hair, none of which belonged to an African-American.
Although with Elmore’s release, it remains unclear who committed the murder, Holt said that she was highly suspicious of Holloway, Edwards’ neighbor.
“Everything pointed to this guy,” Holt said.
Because Holloway died in 1994, however, lawyers never had the chance to prove that their suspicions were correct, she said.
The evidence lawyers and Cornell students helped produce led to Elmore’s death sentence being overturned and his subsequent entitlement to a new trial. Prosecutors told Elmore’s lawyers that if Elmore gave an “Alford plea” — admitting one could be convicted with the evidence — they would release Elmore within the week.
After some resistance, Elmore accepted the plea and was set free that same day, according to Blume.
Although Elmore’s mental retardation hampered his ability to understand every complexity of the case, Blume and Holt said that above all, Elmore understood the moment that he received his freedom.
“What he did understand with 100 percent clarity was when I told him that he was leaving death row and that he was never going back,” Holt said, adding that Elmore was nothing but “sweet, gentle and kind.”
In fact, Elmore was so beloved by his clientele in Abbeville that several women testified at the “penalty phase” of the trial, saying that they used to trust Elmore with their children and homes, Holt said.
Now, Holt said, Elmore is living in Abbeville with his sister and family.
“He’s wrapped in a cocoon of love,” Holt said.
One student who had heard of the case, LouLou Fitzelle ’15, said that “it’s cases like these, the rare and remarkable ones, that make all the toil and time spent seem worth it.”
Similarly, Blume said the case was “a testament to the power of persistence and to the importance of teamwork.”
Both attorneys said that the case’s rarity — having Elmore freed after over three decades in prison for a crime that he did not commit — most affected them.
“At the end of the day, this was the case of a lifetime,” Holt said.
Edward Lee Elmore was released from prison in South Carolina on March 2 after agreeing to a plea arrangement in which he maintained his innocence but agreed the state could re-convict him of murder in a new trial.
He had been on death row for nearly 30 years after being convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the sexual assault and murder of an elderly woman in Greenwood, South Carolina.
The state's case was based on evidence gathered from a questionable investigation and on testimony with glaring discrepancies. Elmore’s appellate lawyers discovered evidence pointing to Elmore's possible innocence that prosecutors had withheld.
Originally, state officials repeatedly claimed the evidence had been lost. The evidence included a hair sample collected from the crime scene. After being tested for DNA, the evidence suggested an unknown Caucasian man may have been the killer.
In February 2010, Elmore was found to have intellectual disabilities and thus was ineligible for execution; he was taken off death row.
In November 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted him a new trial because of the prosecutorial misconduct in handling the evidence. The court found there was “persuasive evidence that the agents were outright dishonest,” and there was “further evidence of police ineptitude and deceit.”
Decades ago, in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, parish leaders hoisted a Confederate Flag on the courthouse as a message to the Black community: Your fight for civil rights is not welcome here. Despite the fall of Jim Crow in the South, despite the fact that it’s now 2011—60 years after the flag was originally raised—that flag remained atop the courthouse. Last Friday, that flag’s time above Caddo Parish’s hall of justice came to an end when it was finally removed.
Six months ago the American Civil Liberties Union argued to the Louisiana Supreme Court that the Confederate Flag’s presence above the Caddo Parish courthouse prevented the death penalty from being administered fairly. The ACLU attorneys claimed that the flag directed white jurors to view Black defendants as being less-than. On Thursday night, heeding the ACLU’s warning, Caddo Parish commissioners voted overwhelmingly (11 to 1) to take down the flag.
"The presence of the Confederate flag outside the courthouse has for too long been a reminder of lynching, terror and the oppression of the African-American race," said ACLU Capital Punishment Project director Denny LeBoeuf in a statement. "Flying the flag outside the courthouse only risks diminishing the trust of African-Americans in the criminal justice system and priming white jurors to view African-American defendants and victims as second-class citizens. Removing the flag brings us one step closer to justice."
A study from Florida State earlier this year confirmed that the Confederate Flag triggers in whites an anti-Black mindset. This in mind, it’s a wonder more localities where the Confederate Flag flies freely aren’t attempting to eliminate the banner from public buildings. In South Carolina, for instance, the “Stars and Bars” still fly above the Statehouse, despite much protestation from the state’s Blacks. Hopefully South Carolina is the ACLU’s next target.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - States not only are having an increasingly difficult time getting the injectable drugs to carry out death sentences, they're also paying as much as 10 times more for the chemicals as in years past.
Ohio only has 40 grams of pentobarbital, enough for 7 executions scheduled through February, meaning a likely scramble to find enough for the four scheduled beyond that.
Texas, with the country's busiest death chamber, says it has enough for 8 more executions but won't comment on supplies past September. It used the drug Thursday night for the execution of Mexican national Humberto Leal for the 1994 rape-slaying of a 16-year-old girl in San Antonio, despite White House pleas for a Supreme Court stay.
Ohio, Texas and several other states switched to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental this year, after the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium pentothal said it would discontinue production.
Lake Forest, Ill.-based Hospira, which strongly opposed the drug's use in executions, stopped manufacturing it altogether. Hospira said it couldn't promise authorities in Italy, where the drug was to be produced, that it could control the product's distribution all the way to the end user to guarantee it wouldn't be used in executions.
States then switched to pentobarbital, but Denmark-based Lundbeck Inc., the only U.S.-licensed maker of the injectable barbiturate, said July 1 it would put the medication off-limits for capital punishment. It announced a new, tightly controlled distribution system, intended to keep the drug out of the hands of prisons while ensuring deliveries to hospitals and treatment centers for therapeutic purposes, as in the treatment of epilepsy.
It's unclear whether states will be able to stockpile any remaining pentobarbital, which is marketed as Nembutal. Lundbeck says it believes little inventory is left for states to purchase following the announcement. And with an expiration date of about two years, states would have to switch by 2013 anyway.
If pentobarbital supplies dry up, executions could be delayed around the nation as states look for yet another alternative.
For many states, making a switch requires a lengthy regulatory and review process. And any change typically leads to lawsuits from inmates who claim the substance violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Lawsuits over pentobarbital are still being heard.
States got sticker shock when they switched to pentobarbital. Ohio used to spend $218 for 5 grams of sodium thiopental, which it used in combination with two drugs and then, beginning in 2009, as a stand-alone injection.
Now, Ohio spends $2,158 for the same 5-gram dose of pentobarbital, or $6,474 for executions in March, April and May.
Ohio prisons spokesman Carlo LoParo said the state had no alternative but to pay the higher price. He wouldn't comment on the state's plans beyond the February execution.
Texas spent $1,273 on the pentobarbital used to execute Cary Kerr in May for raping and killing a woman 10 years ago. That's almost exactly how much the state spent on sodium thiopental for 17 executions in 2010, or $1,224.
Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina are among other states that confirmed the cost spike to The Associated Press.
Lundbeck a attributes the high cost to its contract with a U.S.-based manufacturer that produces the drug, along with ongoing upgrades and improvements to the drug.
Pentobarbital, available for use since 1930, is used by doctors as a sedative in some surgeries, as a hypnotic for short-term treatment of insomnia and to control certain types of seizures, such as those associated with bouts of cholera, meningitis and an emergency state of epilepsy.
The drug in powdered form has also been used in legally assisted suicides in Oregon and Washington. That form, which is made by some companies for veterinary use, is not approved for FDA use in humans. States are unlikely to pursue that as an option because of inevitable lawsuits challenging the use of a non-FDA approved medication.
A chemically related version of pentobarbital marketed to veterinarians is also used in combination with other drugs as Somnasol to euthanize animals.
The drug's veterinary use is a bargain compared to lethal injection for humans. A dose of Somnasol capable of putting a 1,000-pound horse to sleep costs about $28, said Dr. John Hubbell, professor of veterinary clinical sciences at Ohio State University.
It's also more expensive to put someone to death with pentobarbital than to use in assisted suicide. In Washington state, a typical dose of pentobarbital in powdered form costs about $400 for a 10-gram dose, twice the amount used in executions, according to Dr. Tom Preston, medical director of Compassion and Choices of Washington, a group supporting assisted suicide.
Lundbeck's announcement should end an increasingly ugly public relations and investment campaign aimed at pressuring the company to block pentobarbital's use in executions.
Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, had urged Lundbeck to ban use of pentobarbital in executions.
Lundbeck, which manufactures the drug at a U.S. facility it won't identify, said it will now sell directly to hospitals using its previous distributor, Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health, to ship the product. Cardinal said it is working with Lundbeck to implement the system through a Cardinal division, Specialty Pharmaceutical Services.
Cardinal will review all orders, something drug manufacturers typically leave up to their distributors. Then hospital officials will have to sign forms stating they won't use the drug for capital punishment or resell it. Violators would be blocked from future access to the drug.
Experts say the "drop-ship" system Lundbeck is adopting is an established way to limit drug distribution.
"This in essence takes the drug out of the standard distribution system and gives them more control over how the product is used," said health care analyst Dan Mendelson, founder and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Avalere Health.
Drug makers ship about 9 % of their products this way, according to data provided by the Healthcare Distribution Management Association.
Drugs delivered via "drop-ship" typically include expensive cancer treatments that are expensive, difficult to make, or not in high demand.
Such a system protects Lundbeck by letting it prove it's done everything it could to restrict pentobarbital's use, said Dan Steiber, editor of Specialty Pharmacy Times and principal of D2 Pharma Consulting in Plano, Texas.
Lundbeck's action will create accountability in the distribution system, said Nick Calla, vice president of industry relations for Drexel Hill, Pa.-based Community Specialty Pharmacy Network.
"You're putting someone on the hook, someone has to testify this product is not being diverted to a site it's not supposed to be at," Calla said. "For products like this, where there's a direct need not to send it to a certain place, I think it works very well."
Ohio is the only state that uses pentobarbital as a stand-alone dose. Other states use the drug to put inmates to sleep, followed by drugs that paralyze inmates, then stop their hearts.
One possible alternative to pentobarbital is propofol, a powerful anesthetic and one of the drugs implicated in the 2009 death of singer Michael Jackson.
The drug was mentioned as a possible option in documents and testimony in the Kentucky court case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 ruling upholding the constitutionality of lethal injection.
Ohio also has a backup method that involves injecting 2 drugs directly into an inmate's muscles, bypassing the veins. Under that method, the sedative midazolam would be followed by the painkiller hydromorphone.
The method has never been used, however, and it comes with potential problems: state officials previously warned reporters that the drugs could cause convulsions or vomiting in inmates.
Oklahoma became the 1st state to use pentobarbital last year, and Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas were among states that soon followed suit.
The drug has been used in 18 executions this year.
Nembutal or how a European laboratory got caught in the US lethal injection conundrum and why Lundbeck is not actually doing anything substantial to get out of it.
So enters Lundbeck Denmark and its pentobarbital, sold under the trade name “Nembutal”, a drug used in the treatment for epilepsy, to euthanize animals and now as the mean to execute in the US, the land of the free and home of the brave. Obviously Lundbeck did not originally intend to sell it, or any other of its products, to US departments of corrections for this purpose. Nonetheless it happened and Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas purchased it and used it to kill. The issue at stake is not about stopping the sale of Nembutal, but to restrict its distribution to ensure it reaches only the medical profession. It’s necessary to remind Lundbeck that there are ways of restricting its sales through several contractual and distribution options. So far Lundbeck has shown nothing but good intentions, its lack of response has killed 11 persons in the US; this, of course, in violation of the European standards on pharmaceutical ethics and to the dismay of a growing number of its shareholders.
How many more executions before Lundbeck implements one of the following options:
use specialty pharmacy to distribute Nembutal in the US
use a third party logistics company in the US and distribute Nembutal to select users through drop-ship distribution
Lundbeck’s current distribution system offers little control, if any, over the supply chain. It needs to identify and track the product to guarantee visibility of its final destination. There is a cost associated with the tagging system, but is this really too much when human lives are at stake?
Lundbeck disagrees with the use of Nembutal in US executions but does not want to take adequate measures to stop it from happening? Well, that is some strange ethic, folks! While its spokesperson insists they want to do ‘all they can’ to prevent this illegitimate use of their product, nothing has changed, except for a few letters to the states concerned.
Despite the mission described on its website, Lundbeck has certainly reached a milestone: the record of programmed US deaths induced by a European pharmaceutical laboratory.
One can only hope that the families of those executed, thanks to Lundbeck, will join forces and take Lundbeck to the European Court of Human Rights to get a clear and final resolution to this dramatic and scandalous involvement of a European laboratory in the death trade.
And there is a lot we can do to demand that Lundbeck takes appropriate measures, in case they have not understood or registered them when these were suggested to them. While the European Union is still dicking around the issue, many US states are stocking up and we must join forces to bring the European death trade to an end.
Virginia will join other states that are switching the sedative used in lethal injections because of a nationwide shortage of the drug, officials said Monday
The Virginia Department of Corrections will substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental, whose sole U.S. manufacturer announced in January it would no longer make the drug.
The announcement sent the nation’s 34 death penalty states scrambling to find a new supplier. Some canceled executions, while others obtained the drug from England, but then had it confiscated by federal agents amid questions they circumvented the law to obtain it because that country has banned the drug’s export for executions.
It is not clear whether Virginia purchased sodium thiopental from overseas, and if so whether the Drug Enforcement Administration also seized its supply.
Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor referred all questions to the Attorney General’s Office, which refused to answer questions about whether Virginia had obtained sodium thiopental from overseas.
Virginia will continue to use a three-drug cocktail, only substituting the sedative drugs, said Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office. The 1st drug sedates the inmate, while a 2nd stops his breathing and the 3rd stops the heart.
“The Virginia protocol for lethal injection has been litigated and has been found to be constitutionally acceptable by every court in Virginia that has looked at it ... and we are confident that the change to allow the drug pentobarbital to be substituted for sodium thiopental in the protocol will be found to be constitutionally acceptable, as well,” Gottstein said.
Pentobarbital has survived legal challenges in other states and has been used for recent executions in Oklahoma, Ohio and South Carolina.
Virginia is home to the nation’s 2nd-busiest death chamber, behind Texas. There currently are no scheduled executions.
Source: Associated Press, May 9, 2011
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Jeffrey Motts was executed Friday. He died at 6:17 p.m.
South Carolina on Friday executed a man who strangled his cellmate, using a new combination of lethal injection drugs for the 2st time.
Jeffrey Motts, 36, was declared dead at 6:17 p.m. He was given the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental as part of the lethal 3 drug combination because federal agents seized the state's supply as part of a nationwide investigation into whether prisons obtained the drugs legally from England.
Motts was sentenced to death for killing his cellmate at a state prison in Greenville County in 2005. He was already serving a life sentence for killing 2 elderly people during a Spartanburg County robbery in 1995.
Motts, strapped to a gurney in a green jumpsuit, never looked at the witnesses. It took him about 90 seconds to stop breathing after the lethal drugs began flowing through an IV. He took several heavy breaths, blinked and his head jerked slightly for about a minute before his breaths became shallow and eventually stopped.
His attorney read a last statement before he died: "To my mom and grandma, happy Mother's Day. I know this is a sad one but let us remember the good times. I am finally free and at peace in heaven."
He apologized to his victims' families, his own family and anyone he hurt along the way.
Motts abandoned all his appeals and volunteered for the death chamber
He confessed to strangling Charles "Chuck" Martin just hours after telling guards at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County where to find his body in a prison common area.
During that confession, he also asked investigators to tell prosecutors he was serving two life sentences and a third wasn't going to make a difference.
He told his attorneys he wanted to die, saying he only went to trial so his parents wouldn't think he was giving up. His push to enter the death chamber wavered briefly when his lawyers suggested he might be able to donate a kidney to his ailing sister, but he reaffirmed his wish to die after the 2 turned out not to be a match.
Motts and Martin had ended up in the same cell together in November 2005 despite asking to be kept apart because of a dispute over a stolen radio and a shank found in another inmate's cell.
Motts was already serving a life sentence for a 1995 double murder in Spartanburg County in the northwest part of the state. He tied up 79-year-old Clyde Camby and shot him at close range in the cheek at a home in Pacolet, then shot his 73-year-old great-aunt
Etta Osteen was shot in the back as she tried to get away, investigators said.
Camby was found with his pockets turned inside out. Authorities said Motts killed the pair to get money to buy crack.
He mentioned his drug addiction in his last statement.
"I want to warn kids of the dangers of drugs. I was the child everyone wanted their children around until I got on drugs. Drugs will destroy your life."
Executions have been carried out at the Broad River Correctional Institution since 1990.
Since 1997, however, death row has been at Lieber Correctional Institution near Ridgeville in the Lowcountry.
Once inmates are moved to the capital punishment facility they can no longer have visits with their families.
They are only allowed visits from their attorneys and spiritual advisors.
The last meal is served some time between 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m.
3 drugs are used for the lethal injection:
Pentobarbital puts the inmate to sleep
Pavulon stops breathing
Potassium Chloride stops the heart
The Department of Corrections separated death row from the capital punishment facility so the correctional officers who deal with death row inmates ever day for years are not the same ones who carry out the execution.
Motts becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in South Carolina and the 43rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1985.
Motts becomes the 14th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1248th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Sources: Associated Press, Rick Halperin, May 6, 2011
Drugs supplied by pharmaceutical company Lundbeck will today [Friday, May 6, 2011] allow the first execution in South Carolina in two years to go ahead.
Jeffrey Motts is set to be the first prisoner executed in the state using a new three-drug ‘cocktail’, adopted as a result of shortages in the US of a key anaesthetic previously used in the process.
A barbiturate, pentobarbital, will for the first time be used by South Carolina’s authorities as the initial step in the cocktail. This is an untested process which has raised concerns - not least as it is explicitly outlawed by vets for the euthanasia of animals.
Denmark-headquartered Lundbeck is increasingly becoming the major player in the American execution drugs market as it is the sole supplier of pentobarbital to the USA.
Death rows in the US have struggled to get hold of the previously-used drug, sodium thiopental, ever since domestic production ceased and action by Governments and companies around the world opposed to the death penalty cut off many lines of supply. South Carolina had obtained a stockpile of sodium thiopental from a British supplier operating out of the back of a driving school in Acton – however, this was seized towards the end of April by the US Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA). As a result, they have now turned to Lundbeck’s pentobarbital.
Despite this, and the wider issue of the use of their products in executions, Lundbeck have refused to explain why they will not take action to prevent this from happening. Today’s execution is expected to bring the total number of people executed in the US using Lundbeck’s drugs to seven.
Reprieve Investigator Maya Foa said: “Lundbeck say they’re committed to improving life, yet this week alone their drugs have been used for two deaths. Something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Please sign and tell Danish company to stop helping the death penalty business in the USA! This petition is international and open to all! Please select your country, sign and share widely!
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Execution dates known or thought to be considered SERIOUS are marked with a *.The designation indicates that an execution is considered more likely to be carried out.
Please note that this designation should in no way be construed as absolute. Stays can be granted or denied at the very last moment prior to an execution.
A name with no * designation may simply mean that not enough information is currently available to know whether the execution date is serious. In other words, please DO NOT automatically equate the fact that a name with no * designation means that his/her assigned execution date is not serious. It might, in fact, be (very) serious.
2011
May
6* Jeffrey Motts, South Carolina
10* Benny Joe Stevens, Mississippi
17* Daniel Bedford, Ohio
17* Rodney Gray, Mississippi
19* Jason Williams, Alabama
25* Donald Beaty, Arizona
June
1* Gayland Bradford, Texas
14* Shawn Hawkins, Ohio
14* Carey Dean Moore, Nebraska
15* John Balentine, Texas
16* Lee Andrew Taylor, Texas
16* Eddie Powell, Alabama
21* Milton Mathis, Texas
22* Frank Williams Jr., Arkansas
July
7* Humberto Leal, Texas
12* Marcel Williams, Arkansas
19* Kenneth Smith, Ohio
20* Mark Stroman, Texas
August
10* Martin Robles, Texas
16* Brett Hartman, Ohio
30* Ivan Cantu, Texas
September
13 Joel Schmeiderer, Tennessee
15* Duane Buck, Texas
20* Billy Slagle, Ohio
27 David Jordan, Tennessee
October
4 John Henretta, Tennessee
11 H-R Hester, Tennessee
18* Joseph Murphy, Ohio
November
15* Reginald Brooks, Ohio
2012
January
18* Charles Lorraine, Ohio
February
22* Michael Webb, Ohio
Click here for additional information on scheduled executions in Texas on the TDCJ website.
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Drugs supplied by European pharmaceutical companies are set to be used to execute two US prisoners on the 3rd and 6th of May.
Anaesthetics from Denmark-headquartered Lundbeck and UK-based Dream Pharma will be used in the respective executions by lethal injection of Cary Kerr in Texas and Jeffrey Motts in South Carolina.
Several states are in possession of large supplies of sodium thiopental, the anaesthetic due to be used in the execution of Jeffrey Motts, which they were able to acquire from the UK in the delay before the British government imposed export controls. There are serious concerns that the drug, bought through back-channels from a tiny firm in an office in a driving school in Acton, may be faulty – leaving prisoners in severe pain during their executions. Three botched executions using the drug have already been carried out.
Meanwhile, Lundbeck continues to supply the barbiturate pentobarbital through a facility based in the USA. The barbiturate was not intended for use in lethal injections and has never been clinically tested for the purpose. The new protocol hastily adopted by Texas (in less than three weeks, without scientific or medical consultation) is recognised to be particularly dangerous. It calls for pentobarbital followed by pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride: a combination so risky and inhumane that vets explicitly outlaw it in the practice of animal euthanasia.
The execution of Cary Kerr on Tuesday will be the first in Texas using this lethal injection cocktail, and, if the state Department of Corrections (which boasts the busiest execution chamber in the USA) has its way, the first of many.
Death rows in the US have been looking abroad for execution drugs ever since the only domestic supplier ended production of sodium thiopental, the first stage in the (until recently) widely-used three drug execution cocktail.
Appalled by the prospect of complicity in US executions, Governments and pharmaceutical firms in Britain, Italy, Austria and India have found ways to prevent the use of their drugs for killing prisoners. Lundbeck has failed to take similar action and the Danish Government appears incapable or unwilling to exert any effective pressure.
Reprieve Investigator Maya Foa said: “With two executions looming, Lundbeck should be doing everything in their power to mitigate the damage done in their name. Delays are fatal, as the execution of Jeffrey Motts using British drugs on Friday will show. There are many simple and common mechanisms Lundbeck could use to prevent their drugs being used to kill people. Their continued reluctance to employ them is shameful.”
Source: Reprieve, April 27, 2011
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In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5' 1" and 95 pounds, the straps didn’t fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.
The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.
Now, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney’s name, saying the young boy couldn’t have killed two girls. George Frierson, a school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney’s confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.
In a couple of cases like Stinney’s, petitions are being made before parole boards and courts are being asked to overturn decisions made when society’s thumb was weighing the scales of justice against blacks. These requests are buoyed for the first time in generations by money, college degrees and sometimes clout.
“I hope we see more cases like this because it help brings a sense of closure. It’s symbolic,” said Howard University law professor Frank Wu. “It’s not just important for the individuals and their families. It’s important for the entire community. Not just for African Americans, but for whites and for our democracy as a whole. What these cases show is that it is possible to achieve justice.”
Some have already achieved justice. Earlier this year, syndicated radio host Tom Joyner successfully won a posthumous pardon for two great uncles who were executed in South Carolina.
A few years ago Lena Baker, a black Georgia maid sent to the electric chair for killing a white man, received a pardon after her family pointed out she likely killed the man because he was holding her against her will.
In the Stinney case, supporters want the state to admit that officials executed the wrong person in June 1944.
Stinney was accused of killing two white girls, 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and 8 year old Mary Emma Thames, by beating them with a railroad spike then dragging their bodies to a ditch near Acolu, about five miles from Manning in central South Carolina. The girls were found a day after they disappeared following a massive manhunt. Stinney was arrested a few hours later, white men in suits taking him away. Because of the risk of a lynching, Stinney was kept at a jail 50 miles away in Columbia.
Stinney’s father, who had helped look for the girls, was fired immediately and ordered to leave his home and the sawmill where he worked. His family was told to leave town prior to the trial to avoid further retribution. An atmosphere of lynch mob hysteria hung over the courthouse. Without family visits, the 14 year old had to endure the trial and death alone.
Frierson hasn’t been able to get the case out of his head since, carrying around a thick binder of old newspaper stories and documents, including an account from an execution witness.
The sheriff at the time said Stinney admitted to the killings, but there is only his word — no written record of the confession has been found. A lawyer helping Frierson with the case figures threats of mob violence and not being able to see his parents rattled the seventh- grader.
Attorney Steve McKenzie said he has even heard one account that says detectives offered the boy ice cream once they were done.
“You’ve got to know he was going to say whatever they wanted him to say,” McKenzie said.
The court appointed Stinney an attorney — a tax commissioner preparing for a Statehouse run. In all, the trial — from jury selection to a sentence of death — lasted one day. Records indicate 1,000 people crammed the courthouse. Blacks weren’t allowed inside.
The defense called no witnesses and never filed an appeal. No one challenged the sheriff’s recollection of the confession.
“As an attorney, it just kind of haunted me, just the way the judicial system worked to this boy’s disadvantage or disfavor. It did not protect him,” said McKenzie, who is preparing court papers to ask a judge to reopen the case.
Stinney’s official court record contains less than two dozen pages, several of them arrest warrants. There is no transcript of the trial.
The lack of records, while not unusual, makes it harder for people trying to get these old convictions overturned, Wu said.
But these old cases also can have a common thread.
“Some of these cases are so egregious, so extreme that when you look at it, the prosecution really has no case either,” Wu said. “It’s apparent from what you can see that someone was railroaded.”
And sometimes, police under pressure by frightened citizens jumped to conclusions rather than conducting a thorough investigation, Wu said.
Source: Bluffton Today - 'Crusaders look to right Jim Crow justice wrongs' by Jeffrey Collins - Photo: South Carolina Department of Archives and History
Brother Of Youngest Execution Victim Ever Speaks Out
Charles Stinney, the brother of the youngest person executed in the United States, spoke to theGrio.com about the controversial execution.
His brother, George Junius Stinney, Jr. was executed at the age of 14. He was convicted of killing two white girls in Alcolu, South Carolina in 1944.
New evidence could clear 14-year-old executed by South Carolina
Over 67 years after 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. was put to death by the state of South Carolina, he may soon be cleared of the crime that people familiar with the case say he never could have committed.
A lawyer and an activist both told Raw Story recently that new evidence will show that the black boy could not have possibly murdered two white girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and seven-year-old Mary Emma Thames.
Stinney, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the last 100 years, was executed on June 16, 1944. At five feet one inch and only 95 pounds, the straps of the electric chair did not fit the boy. His feet could not touch the floor.
As he was hit with the first 2,400-volt surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth,” according to author Joy James. After two more jolts of electricity, the boy was dead.
Less than three months earlier, Stinney, who had no previous history of violence, had been accused of the crime after he admitted speaking to the girls when they stopped by a field in Alcolu where he was grazing his cow to ask where they could find maypops, a type of flower.
Authorities alleged Stinney had used a railroad spike to shatter both of the girls’ heads. The boy was taken into a room with several white officers and within an hour, they said he had confessed. Because there were no Miranda rights in 1944, Stinney was questioned without a lawyer and his parents were not allowed into the room.
ATLANTA — On paper, the drug that states are increasingly counting on to replace a sedative used in executions shares several drawbacks with the one that's no longer readily available.
Both were intended for other uses. Each was or is made by only one company in the U.S. And the substitute drug will have to run the same legal gauntlet that the first drug survived.
There is one key difference, however: Experts say there is plenty of the replacement, pentobarbital, and it's not likely the manufacturer will abruptly halt production and touch off the kind of supply crisis that struck the first drug's maker.
There already was a shortage of sodium thiopental before its manufacturer, Hospira Inc., said in January it would no longer make the drug, sending most of the 35 death penalty states scrambling for an alternative. The Lake Forest, Ill.-based company quit production when lawmakers in Italy, home of the company's new factory, demanded assurances that the substance would not be used in executions.
Lundbeck Inc., which makes pentobarbital, is based in Denmark -- another European country that opposes the death penalty.
However, Lundbeck and outside experts said there is no shortage in sight. And independent data collected by a health firm showed the drug's sales have steadily increased since 2005.
A shortage doesn't appear to be on the horizon, though it could arise without warning, said Dr. David Varlotta, a Tampa, Fla., anesthesiologist who sits on the board of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. That could throw the capital punishment calendar in the U.S. off schedule all over again.
"The shortages come up so rapidly, we don't have time to prepare," he said, noting that his hospital is facing shortfalls of key anesthetics because of the volatility of the supply chain.
Using pentobarbital for lethal injections also raises medical questions, since it has only been used in a few executions and rarely is used in humans. Varlotta, for one, said he has not used pentobarbital since 1986.
"If departments of corrections are moving toward pentobarbital, they're moving away from the expertise of anesthesiologists," said Varlotta, who was appointed in 2007 to study Florida's lethal injection procedure after a botched execution there.
Others say there's no reason to fear a switch. Mark Dershwitz, a University of Massachusetts anesthesiologist, said pentobarbital could be readily adopted by states as long as the supply holds up. The biggest difference between the two drugs, he said, is that pentobarbital knocks out patients longer.
"And no one can say that's a disadvantage when used in an execution," he said.
The shortage of sodium thiopental -- which for more than 30 years has been the first of a three-drug cocktail used by dozens of states -- had corrections departments across the country delaying executions and looking to overseas manufacturers not approved by federal regulators. Officials had hoped the more potent pentobarbital would ease the crisis.
Oklahoma adopted pentobarbital last year as part of its three-drug combination. As the shortage of sodium thiopental grew worse, Ohio announced it would use it alone to put inmates to death. And an Associated Press review revealed every state but South Carolina said it is considering switching to alternatives, which is only likely to intensify scrutiny of pentobarbital.
Sally Benjamin Young, a spokeswoman for Lundbeck's U.S. subsidiary that makes pentobarbital, would not disclose how much pentobarbital the company manufactures in the U.S. each year. But she said the company has had no supply problems thus far and did not expect future supply issues.
However, using the drug for executions is not what the company intended and "goes against everything we're in business to do," she said.
The drug was originally introduced to market in 1973 and Lundbeck acquired the product rights in 2003, Young said. The company, whose U.S. headquarters are a few miles from Hospira's in Deerfield, Ill., has been making the drug in the same Kansas facility since 2007, and Young said Lundbeck has no plans to move the product to another factory.
Sales of pentobarbital grew by 16 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to IMS Health. The independent firm said some $25.5 million worth of the drug, brand name Nembutal, was sold in 2010 -- more than double the $10.1 million sold in 2006.
Lundbeck said it has no way of keeping the drug out of death chambers. And it's unlikely the Danish government can step in as Italian authorities did, said Maya Foa, an investigator with London-based civil rights group Reprieve, which opposes the death penalty. Regulators could be hamstrung because the company's manufacturing plant is in the U.S., she said.
"There's not a lot they can do about it," said Foa, who is visiting Denmark this week to meet with local officials. "They say once they sell a product, they have no control over how it's used."
Pentobarbital likely will have to pass legal muster in U.S. courts. As they did with sodium thiopental, inmates have begun to argue that the drug does not adequately sedate the condemned, leading to a painful death that violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that sodium thiopental was constitutional.
Jeffrey Landrigan is revealed to have died in agony in Arizona
A third American prisoner has suffered an excruciating death after an anaesthetic supplied by British drug company Dream Pharma apparently failed during the lethal injection procedure in Arizona.
In a sworn statement for Reprieve’s pending High Court action, lawyer and eyewitness Dale Baich states that Jeffrey Landrigan’s eyes remained open during the lethal injection process. This is a rare phenomenon and a key indicator that the anaesthetic, sodium thiopental, has failed.
Reprieve has now established that all three prisoners executed using Dream Pharma sodium thiopental have kept their eyes open. Emmanuel Hammond and Brandon Rhode in Georgia both appeared awake when they should have been unconscious, while Hammond repeatedly grimaced in pain.
There are increasingly urgent concerns over the efficacy of British sodium thiopental, supplied by a one-man wholesaler operating out of the back of an Acton driving academy. Following last year’s nationwide shortage in the US, Dream Pharma shipped the drug to prisons in Georgia, California, South Carolina, Arkansas and Arizona at dramatically inflated prices. The thiopental was sent via FedEx under uncontrolled conditions despite the fact that the drug degrades at temperatures above 26 degrees Celsius. Experts suggest that either the storage conditions in Acton or the shipping process could be responsible for the drug’s failure.
Reprieve has begun legal proceedings against British pharmaceutical regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), for refusing to recall all Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental in the face of clear risk that the drug is faulty. If successful, the case may halt executions in Arizona and many other states indefinitely.
Expert witnesses in the pending legal action have stated that prisoners normally lapse into deep unconsciousness within 10-12 seconds of sodium thiopental reaching their bloodstream. Dr Mark Heath, a consultant anaesthetist at Columbia hospital in New York, states that the prisoner’s eyes should remain closed and his body motionless. If not, this would indicate “an agonising death… asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonising in the absence of adequate anaesthesia”. Dr Heath’s affidavit states that the recent executions are “highly atypical… based on my studies of lethal injection, it is very unusual and surprising for a prisoner’s eyes to remain open after the efficacious administration of thiopental. One explanation is that thiopental lacked efficacy”. Rev Carroll Pickett, who has attended 95 executions as a prison chaplain in Texas, has said that on the very few occasions when he observed that a prisoner “did not lose consciousness almost immediately… it was due to the thiopental being close to or possibly past its expiration date”.
Three witnesses to the execution of Emanuel Hammond have expressed concern about the process. Professor Sheri Johnson, who watched particularly intently because she knew there were doubts over the British thiopental’s efficacy, said “he closed his eyes perhaps ten seconds after the drugs started. But then, some time later, he opened them again”. Professor Johnson added that this was quite unlike three thiopental executions she had seen before, when the prisoners closed their eyes very quickly and remained “totally still”, apparently in a coma. Josh Green, a reporter with the Gwinnett Daily Post, confirms that Hammond first closed, and then re-opened his eyes some time after receiving the thiopental, while Jill Rand, a Florida nurse who became Hammond’s pen friend, said she saw him move his lips.
Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said:
“Why does a regulator exist if not to prevent British drugs failing or, worse, causing pain to patients? It is difficult to see how much more evidence the MHRA needs in order to recall a faulty drug. If Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental is not taken out of circulation, more prisoners are likely to die in agony and the MHRA will bear responsibility for their ordeal.”
For more information please contact Katherine O’Shea at Reprieve’s Press Office katherine.oshea@reprieve.org.uk / 020 7427 1099/ 07931592674.
Background:
In the summer of 2010, the only US manufacturer of execution drug sodium thiopental, Hospira, ceased production of the substance due to a shortage of raw materials, forcing Departments of Corrections in executing states to source their drugs from overseas. Reprieve discovered that a company in Britain was supplying these chemicals and set out to stop British complicity in executions. The approved execution protocol in the United States consists of a cocktail of three drugs: sodium thiopental (also known as thiopental sodium and pentothal) supposedly anaesthetizes the victim, before pancuronium bromide paralyses the muscles and potassium chloride stops the heart.
On 25th October 2010, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed in Arizona using sodium thiopental imported from Britain. The lawyers of Edmund Zagorski, a man who has spent 28 years of his life on death row in Tennessee, subsequently contacted Reprieve with the information that the Tennessee Department of Corrections was seeking to purchase their own supply of sodium thiopental from the same company. Reprieve and lawyers Leigh Day & Co contacted members of the government, asking them to put in place emergency measures to prevent the export of the chemical, and thus stay Edmund's execution. Business Secretary Vince Cable and Jeremy Browne MP on behalf of the FCO declined to take such a step.
Reprieve therefore filed for judicial review of the government’s failure to prevent British complicity in executions. Counsel for the government initially argued that it was not worth imposing an export ban as executing states would source their sodium thiopental from elsewhere, but on 29th November Vince Cable finally agreed to put in place a system of controls making it illegal to export sodium thiopental from the UK to the US.
Shortly afterwards, Reprieve discovered that the British company responsible was Dream Pharma, a tiny pharmaceutical wholesalers operating out of the back of a driving academy in Acton, and that it had already exported a substantial quantity of sodium thiopental – as well as the other two lethal injection chemicals – before the ban came into force. We asked Matt Alavi, the Managing Director of Dream Pharma, for his help in mitigating the damage done by his quest for profit; he had been selling sodium thiopental for between six and twelve times its recommended price, knowing that it was to be used in lethal injections. Mr Alavi refused, and the drugs he supplied have already been used to kill three people: Brandon Rhode and Emanuel Hammond in Georgia, as well as Jeffrey Landrigan.
Disturbingly, it seems that Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental may not have been properly effective as an anaesthetic, and that Brandon and Emanuel may therefore have been in agony during their executions. Dr Mark Heath, a renowned lethal injection expert, filed a sworn declaration stating that the fact that Brandon's eyes remained open throughout his execution was highly unusual and strongly suggested that he was not properly anaesthetized and therefore conscious throughout the process. He also wrote that:
“...if the thiopental was inadequately effective Mr Rhode’s death would certainly have been agonizing; there is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonizing in the absence of adequate anesthesia.”
Reprieve is currently asking Business Secretary Vince Cable to put in place strict measures regulating the export of pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride from the UK. We are also asking the governments of Austria and Germany, where sodium thiopental and its active ingredients are still manufactured, to follow Britain in imposing a full export ban on the drug. Hospira, which originally intended to begin manufacturing sodium thiopental destined for American penitentiaries in an Italian factory, announced in January that it would be ceasing all production of the drug. This was largely a consequence of Reprieve’s action, in particular a press conference in Rome in early December.
About Reprieve:
Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 27 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.
Reprieve has represented, and continues to represent, a large number of prisoners who have been rendered and abused around the world, and is conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of ‘ghost prisoners’ in the so-called ‘war on terror.’
