Death penalty opponents have condemned a spate of executions in the U.S. this week, including one that was called off after officials spent an hour trying to set up an IV line for the inmate’s lethal injection.
Reprieve U.S. said three of the four executions scheduled over a two-day stretch this week were “botched.”
Murray Hooper was executed in Arizona on Wednesday, with media witnesses reporting that officials struggled to insert IV lines for 25 minutes and eventually had to insert one in his right leg by cutting into his femoral artery.
Later on Wednesday, Stephen Barbee was put to death in Texas. It took more than 90 minutes to execute Barbee, who was disabled, because prison officials had difficulty finding a usable vein in his body, The Texas Tribune reported.
Barbee’s attorney Richard Ellis told Newsweek he was “saddened that Stephen’s physical disabilities, about which we warned [Texas Department of Criminal Justice], seem to have played a part in his prolonged execution.”
A day later, Alabama abandoned Kenneth Smith’s execution after officials couldn’t find a suitable vein to inject the lethal drugs before a midnight deadline.
Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jon Hamm told journalists that officials had attempted to place IV lines for an hour before concluding that they did not have enough time to execute Smith before the death warrant expired.
Texas took 90 minutes to execute Stephen Barbee because his disability made finding a vein extra difficult.
In Arizona, officials failed to set a line in both Murray Hooper’s arms and resorted to putting a catheter in his femoral artery, near his groin.
— Reprieve (@Reprieve) November 18, 2022
“The recent spate of disastrous lethal injection executions have shown that whatever the drug, whatever the protocol, condemned prisoners often spend their final hours in agonizing pain and distress,” Reprieve U.S. director Maya Foa said in a statement to Newsweek.
“With each gruesome scene in the death chamber, we are witnessing the consequences of persisting with a broken method of execution, in real time.”
Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action, told Newsweek that most people “don’t care if a convicted murderer feels some pain or suffers mental trauma while they are being killed as punishment for their crimes, actual or alleged. The U.S. Supreme Court has said such is to be expected and does not violate our Constitution.
“But whether or not you agree with that, we’re asking state…
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