Lethal facts

Figures it was a New Yorker* who first gave us the idea of using lethal injection as a form of capital punishment way back in the late 1800’s.

Lethal injection was first considered as a means of execution in 1888 when New York's J. Mount Bleyer MD put it forward in an article in the Medico-Legal Journal suggesting that it would be more humane, cheaper and rob the prisoner of the hero status that often attached to hangings. He suggested the intravenous injection of six grains of Morphine. The idea did not catch on and New York introduced the electric chair instead.

However, nowadays, lethal injection had definitely established it itself as the standard and method of choice for execution. Here are some facts:

• During an execution, prison officials will maintain an open telephone line to the Justice Department in Washington. The President has sole authority to grant last-minute clemency.
• Of the 38 U.S. states that have a death penalty, 34 use lethal injection as the primary form of execution.
  
• In 1977, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal-injection legislation.
  
• In 1982, the United States became the first country to use lethal injection as a means of carrying out capital punishment.
  
• The American military has also moved to lethal injection (from hanging) and now has a facility in the basement of the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas which is currently housing six or seven inmates.
• In Arkansas in 1994, prison officials, citing the disruptive impact of executions on staff and other prisoners and the high cost of "rehearsal time" and overtime pay, took steps to reduce both problems by conducting multiple executions.
  
• On the 11th of June 2001 Timothy McVeigh became the first person to be executed under Federal law since 1963.
  
• In most cases the prisoner is unconscious about a minute after the Sodium thiopental has been injected and is dead in around eight minutes, with no obvious signs of physical suffering.
• Trained technicians insert a 14 gauge catheter (the largest commercially available needle) into a vein in each arm.
• When the condemned person has made any final statement, the prison warden gives the signal for the execution to begin and the technician(s), hidden from view behind a two way mirror, begins to manually inject the three chemicals comprising typically 15 - 50 cc of Sodium thiopental, 15 - 50 cc of Pavulon and 15 - 50 cc of Potassium chloride.
• As of 2001, approximately 120 countries allow for some form of capital punishment. However, it should be noted that about 20 of these countries have not performed an execution in the last 10 years or more, according to Amnesty International

Although many percieve it as the most humane way to go, some would disagree. Below is a list of botched lethal injections:

• March 14th, 1984 James Autrey. Texas.
  Autrey took at least 10 minutes to die after the chemicals began to be injected. Throughout much of those ten minutes he was fully conscious and complained of pain. This was caused by the catheters clogging so delaying the transmission of the chemicals. It is also probable that the needle either did not enter the vein or passed through it. When the lethal chemicals enter the muscles instead they cause considerable pain.
• March 13th, 1985. Stephen Peter Morin. Texas.
  Technicians had to probe both arms and legs with needles for 45 minutes before they found the vein.
• August 20th, 1986 Randy Woolls. Texas.
  A drug addict, Woolls had to help the execution technicians find a good vein for the execution.
• June 24th, 1987 Elliot Johnson. Texas.
  It took 35 minutes to insert the catheter into his vein.
• December 13th, 1988 Raymond Landry. Texas.
  Pronounced dead 40 minutes after being strapped to the execution gurney and 24 minutes after the drugs first started flowing into his arms. Two minutes into the execution, the catheter came out of Landry's vein, spraying the chemicals across the room towards witnesses. The execution team had to reinsert the catheter into the vein. The curtain was closed for 14 minutes so witnesses could not observe the intermission.
• May 24th, 1989. Stephen McCoy. Texas.
  McCoy had such a violent physical reaction to the drugs (heaving chest, gasping, choking, etc.) that one of the witnesses (male) fainted, crashing into and knocking over another witness. The Texas Attorney General admitted the inmate "seemed to have somewhat stronger reaction", adding "The drugs might have been administered in a heavier dose or more rapidly."
• September 12th, 1990. Charles Walker. Illinois.
  According to Dr. Edward A. Brunner over 5 minutes after the activation of Illinois's lethal injection machine, and more than two minutes after the plungers had injected the chemicals, Walkers' heart had not stopped, the Illinois Department of Corrections officials ordered the viewing blinds closed. The witnesses were not aware that Walker had not died, and were not told that there was a problem.
  Without removing Walker form the equipment, officials inspected the equipment and discovered a kink in the intravenous line. They straightened out the line, and a short time later Walker's heart stopped.
• January 24th, 1992. Rickey Ray Rector. Arkansas.
  It took medical staff more than 50 minutes to find a suitable vein in Rector's arm. Witnesses were not permitted to view this scene, but reported hearing Rector's loud moans throughout the process. During the ordeal Rector tried to help the medical personnel find a vein. Attendants were about to prepare a "cut-down," when a vein in his right hand was finally discovered - an hour after the procedure began. The administrator of the Arkansas Department of Corrections medical programs said (paraphrased by a newspaper reporter) "the moans did come as a team of two medical people that had grown to five worked on both sides of his body to find a vein."
• March 10th, 1992. Robyn Lee Parks. Oklahoma.
  Parks had a violent reaction to the drugs. Two minutes after the drugs were administered, the muscles in his jaws, neck, and abdomen began to react spasmodically for approximately 45 seconds. Parks continued to gasp and violently gag. Death came eleven minutes after the drugs were administered. Wayne Greene a reporter on the Tulsa World newspaper described Park's execution as looking "scary and ugly."
• April 23rd, 1992. Billy Wayne White. Texas.
  It took 47 minutes for the prison staff to find a suitable vein, and White eventually had to help them.
• May 7th, 1992. Justin Lee May. Texas.
  May had an unusually violent reaction to the lethal drugs. According to Robert Wernsman, a reporter for the Huntsville newspaper, The Item, May gasped, coughed and reared against his heavy leather restraints, coughing once again before his body froze. Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk wrote "He went into a coughing spasm, groaned and gasped, lifted his head from the death chamber gurney and would have arched his back if he had not been belted down. After he stopped breathing, his eyes and mouth remained open".
• May 10th, 1994. John Wayne Gacy. Illinois.
  John Wayne Gacy who had tortured and murdered 33 young men and boys during the 1970s was executed by lethal injection at the Stateville penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois.
  After the injection began, one of the three lethal drugs clogged the tube leading into Gacy's arm, and therefore stopped flowing. Blinds covering the window through which witnesses observed the execution were then drawn. The clogged tube was replaced with a new one, the blinds were opened, and the execution process resumed. Gacy actually took 18 minutes to die. Anaesthesiologists blamed the problem on the inexperience of prison officials who were conducting the execution, saying that proper procedures taught in IV 101 would have prevented the error.
• May 3rd, 1995. Emmitt Foster. Missouri.
  Foster was not pronounced dead until 30 minutes after the flow of chemicals began into his arms. After seven minutes the blinds were closed to prohibit the witnesses from viewing the scene; they were not reopened until three minutes after death pronounced. According to the coroner who pronounced death, the problem was caused by the tightness of the leather straps that bound Foster to the execution gurney; it was so tight that the flow of chemicals into the veins was restricted. It was several minutes after a prison worker finally loosened the strap that death was pronounced. The coroner entered the death chamber twenty minutes after the execution began, noticed the problem, and told the officials to loosen the strap so then execution could proceed.
• May 3rd, 2000. Christina Marie Riggs, Arkansas.
  Christina Marie Riggs was the first woman to be executed in the state of Arkansas. The execution began 18 minutes late because of the difficulty in finding a suitable vein to insert the catheters into. She agreed to have the catheters placed in veins in her wrists. It is not unusual for the prisoner to have help staff in this way.
  

UPDATE:

• December 13th, 2005. Stanley “Tookie” Williams, California.
  “Tookie” Williams was executed for the murder of 4 people. Reporters in the witness chamber mentioned that it took prison officials almost 13 minutes to find a suitable vein in his left arm. Frustrated, “Tookie” even asked officials if they needed help to find his veins. With his chest heaving it took about 15 minutes for him to be pronounced dead once the chemicals were injected.

Lethal Injection (Capital Punishment UK)

How Lethal Injection Works (How Stuff Works)

*Ironically, it is also NY that rececntly ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. It was the jury's behaviors that influenced the court: The Bowers & Steiner study concluded that the "sooner jurors think a defendant will be released from prison, the more likely they are to vote for death and the more likely they are to see the defendant as dangerous."