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Inmates lose execution suit


Posted: 10/26/09 - 12:27:45 pm CDT

JACKSON (AP) — A challenge to Mississippi’s method of lethal injection has been laid to rest for now, more than a year after the state’s most recent execution.
The U.S. Supreme Court this month let stand a Mississippi federal judge’s decision that three death row inmates waited too long to file a lawsuit challenging the combination of three drugs the state uses to execute inmates.

U.S. District Judge W. Allen Pepper’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit came July 15, 2008, only a week before Dale Bishop was executed.

Bishop and three other death row inmates — Alan Dale Walker, Paul Everett Woodward and Gerald James Holland — filed the case. Walker, Woodward and Holland carried the case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Pepper’s ruling last November.

There is a three-year statute of limitations on filing lawsuits challenging the execution method. Pepper — and the 5th Circuit panel — said the clock begins ticking on the date when direct review of a plaintiff’s conviction and sentence is complete.

For Walker, the clock would have started Dec. 2, 1996; for Woodward, March 29, 1999; and for Holland, Oct. 5, 1998, according to the court.
The three filed the challenge in 2007, well after the deadline, the 5th Circuit panel said. The panel said the inmates were aware that they were subject to execution by lethal injection from the moment their convictions became final. Inmates’ attorneys had hoped the case might have been taken up by the Supreme Court amid a continuing national debate over lethal injection methods.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said the Supreme Court ruling was expected “based on the fact that the same issue had been taken to the United States Supreme Court from other federal circuits.”

James W. Craig, a Jackson attorney who represented the three inmates, said the case was decided on the issue of time limitations, not lethal injection procedures.

“The Supreme Court did not decide that Mississippi’s procedure for lethal injection was acceptable,” Craig said. “The court only decided when prisoners must file their challenges to the procedure. Some prisoners are still within that period. At some point, a trial will prove that executions at Parchman are likely to suffocate a conscious, paralyzed prisoner to death.”


Let us know what you think about this story or topic.




No kidding wrote on Oct 27, 2009 11:04 AM:

" We don't have better things to worry about than convicted killers being a tad uncomfortable? I'm with the victims' folks, they didn't worry about their comfort level. "

Summit wrote on Oct 26, 2009 8:47 PM:

" Who really cares what they feel when they are executed? How much sympathy did they show their victims? "

Junior Samples wrote on Oct 26, 2009 4:58 PM:

" I had a colonoscopy done a few years back. The drug given to me to put me to sleep was prophynol. (spell?) The same drug that killed Michael Jackson. The few seconds between being administered the drug and going to sleep was surprisingly quite pleasureable. That being said, after going to sleep and having a video camera inserted into my rectum it was not the least bit painful.....because I was sleepng. I fail to see how lethal injection could be a painful process. Once the person is put to sleep the cocktail of drugs used to cause death is irrelevant in my opinion. They could cause death by blunt force trauma using a brick and it would'nt be painful after being fully sedated using prophynol or something similar. For goodness sake, if you are in a coma like state you don't feel anything. Out of every conceivable means of execution I think lethal injection has to be the most humane and painless way possible. Now the gas chamber seems like a cruel means of killing someone and even the electric chair seems very likely to be painful. But lethal injection painful? Only the needle stick should hurt. We should all be so lucky as to die by way of going to sleep and never waking back up. "

eyeforaneye wrote on Oct 26, 2009 4:35 PM:

" ..."executions @ Parchman are likely to suffocate a concious, paralyzed prisoner
to death". Maybe this type of death would be a good deterent for people contemplating cold-blooded murder. As many victims' families know, they wake up to a constant void where their loved one once was. Murderers wake up daily to hot meals, shelter, etc. at the expense of taxpayers. "

Mr. Ed wrote on Oct 26, 2009 3:53 PM:

" Oh well don't wanna die by lethal injection, don't put yourself in a position to get the death penalty! "

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