Execution drug: Up for scrutiny?

Associated Press

ATLANTA

The thrashing, jerking death of Roy Willard Blankenship has lawyers for death-row inmates plotting fresh arguments against the drug used to execute him, even though they may never prove that it caused spasms in his last moments.

Medical experts say it’s possible that Georgia prison staff botched the procedure last week using a controversial new sedative, that Blankenship had some sort of jarring reaction to the drug, or even that he faked it. Still, defense attorneys around the nation say they plan to cite Blankenship in requests to stop executions using pentobarbital, a chemical being adopted by a growing number of states as they run out of another commonly-used drug.

Blankenship jerked his head several times, mumbled inaudibly and appeared to gasp for breath for several minutes after he was pumped with pentobarbital Thursday in Georgia’s death chamber. Inmates are usually more still during a lethal injection, but medical experts are split about whether Blankenship’s movements were a sign that his execution was bungled.

“As he’s going to sleep, there could be many kinds of reactions. He could have had the same reaction with sodium thiopental,” which was once the predominant execution drug, said Dr. Howard Nearman, chairman of the anesthesiology department at Case Western Reserve University’s medical school.

Georgia’s prison department has stopped short of publicly launching an investigation, but said in a statement it will work with the state attorney general’s office to ensure “execution procedures are medically appropriate.”