Capital punishment in 2022 | “The year of botched executions” in the United States

More than a third of execution attempts in 2022 were mishandled, capital punishment researchers said on Friday, calling the seven visibly botched executions in three states “shocking”, even though the total number of executions remained among the lowest for a generation.

In one of the most comprehensive annual reviews of the death penalty in the United States, the Death Penalty Information Center found that the number of executions this year, at 18, remained significantly lower than a year ago. was 10 years old, when twice as many people on death row had been executed.

As public support for the death penalty has waned, the number of death sentences and executions has declined significantly since the late 1990s; in 1999, 98 people were executed.

But of the 20 execution attempts this year, seven were “visibly problematic”, including two that were ultimately abandoned, the researchers wrote, adding that 2022 could thus be considered “the year of the botched execution”. .

Among the cases cited are three high-profile cases in Alabama, where death chamber staff opened a man’s arm to install an IV and, in two other execution attempts, were unable to install drip before the expiration of the men’s execution warrant.

The other executions took place in Arizona and Texas, where officials struggled for some time before finding suitable veins. The governor of Alabama last month called for a temporary moratorium on the use of the death penalty while he reviews state protocols.

While states attempting to implement the death penalty have faced a series of hurdles in recent years, including the difficulty of obtaining lethal injection products and the prosecution of their use, most problems encountered this year result from difficulties in accessing the veins of prisoners to administer the products.

Some politicians and prison officials have said the executions must be carried out as a matter of urgency, with last-minute appeals from defense lawyers leaving little time before execution warrants expire. Mr Dunham noted that despite the rise in fear of crime – which previously coincided with support for the death penalty – US support for the death penalty remains at one of its strongest points. low since the 1970s. A Gallup poll in October found that 55% of Americans favored the death penalty for those convicted of murder.

According to the researchers, in 37 states, the death penalty has been abolished or has not been applied for more than 10 years.

In Nevada, where no executions have taken place since 2006, the state pardons committee will next week consider commuting the sentences of the 65 Nevada death row inmates to life in prison.

Of the 18 executions this year, Texas and Oklahoma have handled five each, followed by Arizona with three executions and Alabama with two. Oklahoma made headlines earlier in the year when the state announced it would seek to execute 25 prisoners over a 29-month period.

Executions in Oklahoma were halted in 2015 due to botched executions, then later due to a lawsuit over one of the drugs used in lethal injections, but have since resumed.

Widespread problems

Friday’s report cites problems in trying to carry out executions in a range of states. In Arizona, corrections officers had difficulty accessing a vein in a man who had long maintained his innocence in the murder of an 8-year-old girl, only succeeding when the man himself suggested finding a vein in his hand instead.

In Tennessee, the governor has suspended all executions until next year after the state failed to properly test lethal injection products, a revelation that led to an execution being halted about an hour before the prisoner was killed.

In South Carolina, where authorities had sought alternatives after having difficulty finding lethal injection products, a judge stopped the state from carrying out executions by firing squad or electric chair, considering these methods cruel and unusual.

Yet no state has had as many problems as Alabama.

In issuing a temporary moratorium on executions last month, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said she did not believe prison or law enforcement officials were responsible for the failed attempts.

Instead, M.^me Ivey, a Republican, blamed attorneys who filed appeals for prisoners as their execution date neared, saying they had not given prison officials enough time to proceed to executions before the expiration of the execution warrants.

Defense attorneys took offense to this claim, countering that their appeals often raised important new issues and that the state should have had time to carry out the executions if they had been carried out properly.

In one of the executions, which took place in July, prison staff in Atmore, Alabama, spent hours battling to gain access to Joe N. James’ veins. The preparations were hidden from reporters and other witnesses who were allowed to witness the actual execution, but photographs from a private autopsy later showed that the executioners had finally made an incision in one of his arm to access the vein, a procedure known as a “cutdown”.

Several months later, on September 22, the state again scrambled to place an IV on another man, Alan E. Miller. But this time, they didn’t get there before his execution warrant expired at midnight.

Lawyers for Mr Miller, who was convicted of murdering three men in 1999, said at the time he was the sole survivor of an execution. Alabama recently ruled that the state would not execute him by lethal injection, while leaving open the possibility of killing him by nitrogen hypoxia, a method he said he prefers.

A startlingly similar setback occurred last month, when last-minute appeals were denied by the Supreme Court late at night, leaving Alabama about two hours to complete Kenneth E. Smith’s execution. While officials were able to insert an infusion, they were unable to insert a second and determined they did not have time to do so before midnight, thus calling off the execution.

“None of this should have happened,” said Mr Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Centre. “But it’s happened over and over again, fueling the growing public belief that states can’t get it right.” »

This article was originally published in the New York Times.