Delaware Executions Botched, Lawyers for Inmates Say

Death Penalty

Delaware Executions Botched, Lawyers for Inmates Say

Posted Jun 23, 2008, 05:06 pm CDT
By Martha Neil

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that lethal injections are a permissible method of carrying out the death penalty, if properly administered, that doesn't resolve the situation in Delaware.

Lawyers for death row inmates say the state's poorly trained execution teams all-too-frequently don't follow proper procedures and repeatedly failed to execute one inmate, Brian Steckel, in 2005, who took 12 minutes to die and allegedly was given a painful heart-stopping drug without proper anesthesia, reports the News Journal. At one point, the newspaper recounts, Steckel looked over at the warden and said "I didn't think it would take this long."

The class action brought by the Federal Community Defender's office in Philadelphia on behalf of inmates awaiting execution, has persuaded a federal judge to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in Delaware. Among the issues that need to be addressed, according to lawyers for the inmates, are a lack of training and an environment in which anonymity and a lack of investigative follow-up when executions are botched permit the death penalty to be carried out without proper procedures.

"In at least five executions, including Steckel's, the wrong dose of the final drug was administered. In all five cases, more was used than was called for in the protocol," the newspaper writes. "In four other cases, it is not known how much was used because the amount was not recorded as required."

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