[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----MARYLAND

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 20



MARYLAND:

Lethal injection training faulted----Those carrying out executions in Md.
are unqualified, 2 doctors testify


In the most detailed public assessment of the people who perform
Maryland's executions, 2 doctors offered a blistering critique in federal
court yesterday of the men and women assigned to carry out the state's
lethal injection procedures, describing them as poorly trained and
unqualified for their jobs.

Testifying in a lawsuit filed by death row inmate Vernon L. Evans Jr., the
physicians criticized execution team members' understanding of intravenous
systems and of signs that an inmate being put to death might be conscious,
and one doctor concluded that some don't comprehend their individual
responsibilities on the night of an execution.

Asked by an attorney for the state whether he found it "reassuring" that
team members practice monthly and then weekly as a scheduled execution
approaches, Dr. Mark J.S. Heath responded, "Not with this group of people,
I don't."

"The totality of all their knowledge is grossly inadequate," Heath, an
anesthesiologist and assistant professor at Columbia University,
testified. "Them spending time together ... is likely to lead them further
astray into other areas of misconception."

The doctors testified on the 2nd day of the trial in the suit filed by
Evans, whose attorneys are challenging Maryland's lethal injection
procedures on grounds that they violate the constitutional ban on cruel
and unusual punishment.

They also argue that three decades of intravenous heroin use by Evans have
so ravaged his veins that he is at a particular risk of excruciating pain.

The trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore follows similar lawsuits
filed in other states by condemned prisoners contesting lethal injection
procedures. Courts in 3 of the 37 states that use nearly identical lethal
injection procedures have required officials to modify their procedures,
and executions have been halted in 2 other states because of pending legal
challenges to the lethal injection protocol.

Evans, 56, was sentenced to death 14 years ago for the 1983 contract
killings of David Scott Piechowicz and his sister-in-law, Susan Kennedy,
at a Pikesville motel where they worked.

Piechowicz and his wife, Cheryl, who was also an employee at the Warren
House Motor Hotel, were scheduled to testify in court against drug kingpin
Anthony Grandison. Grandison, also sentenced to death for the killings,
remains on Maryland's death row.

The Maryland Court of Appeals postponed Evans' execution, scheduled for
the week of Feb. 6, to hear pending legal challenges.

The postponement also allowed Evans to pursue his federal suit. His legal
team, led by A. Stephen Hut Jr., hopes to persuade U.S. District Judge
Benson E. Legg to direct Maryland officials to change their execution
procedures and to require that trained medical personnel be involved.

Other than a doctor whose role in past executions has been limited to
pronouncing death, the team member with the most medical training is a
certified nursing assistant, according to testimony.

During opening statements, Laura Mullally, a lawyer for the state, said
that an execution should not be held to the same standards that the
practice of medicine is.

Evans' defense team is scheduled to call to the witness stand today and
tomorrow seven members of Maryland's execution team. Because their
identities are protected, they will testify in a closed courtroom while a
live audio feed pipes their comments into another room.

Yesterday's testimony offered something of a preview.

After playing short segments of the execution team member's sworn
testimony from videotaped depositions or relying on their expert medical
witnesses to summarize the team members' earlier testimony, Evans'
attorneys asked the two physicians, Heath and Dr. Thomas Scalea, a surgeon
and physician in chief at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, to evaluate the
execution team members' statements.

In one clip, the retired state trooper responsible for injecting lethal
doses of 3 drugs into IV lines said he had never before seen the Maryland
Execution Operations Manual.

Asked to skim some of its contents, he testified that he had heard other
team members saying some of the steps contained in the manual during past
executions.

"There's a lady who says things like this," he said in the clip. "But I
never paid a whole lot of attention to it because it doesn't have much to
do with what I do."

Heath testified that the phrase that the man read from the manual involved
the injection of drugs, that team member's precise job.

"It sort of defies comprehension that when they talk about injecting a
syringe of drugs that he says that doesn't have to do with what he does,"
Heath said.

In another videotaped snippet, the doctor who has declared executed
inmates to be dead expressed surprise that the state had also designated
her as the person who would slice into an inmate's limb to insert a
catheter in a deeper vein if the team's nursing assistant could not start
a standard IV.

Asked whether she would "feel comfortable" performing such a task - called
a "cut-down procedure" - the doctor responded, "I do not do cut-down
procedures. Period."

In another clip, the nursing assistant responsible for starting and
monitoring the IV line testified that she assesses a prisoner's "depth of
anesthesia" based on whether he is moving, combative, struggling, yelling
or crying.

Asked how she would be able to tell whether the inmate was not properly
anesthetized once the second chemical - a paralytic drug - entered his
system, she responded, "I wouldn't."

Heath, the anesthesiologist, characterized her approach as "very
rudimentary" and testified that an increased heart rate, elevated blood
pressure, moist skin and the formation of tears in a patient's eyes are
all signs that he might not be fully unconscious.

Evans' attorneys have argued that the issue of whether a condemned inmate
is fully anesthetized is critical.

If the IV is not properly inserted and insufficient anesthesia makes it
into the prisoner's bloodstream, there is a risk that the inmate will be
conscious when the 3rd chemical - a heart-stopping drug - is injected into
the IV. Because the 2nd drug paralyzes the inmate, he would not be able to
move or indicate that he was experiencing pain.

Scalea also called into question the credibility of the nursing assistant
who participated in the executions of Steven H. Oken in 2004 and Wesley
Eugene Baker in December.

Scalea told the judge that the nursing assistant was "factually incorrect"
when she testified that she was qualified to monitor a patient's level of
consciousness during surgery and that a patient's arterial blood pressure
could cause the dislodgment of a catheter inserted into a vein.

He also questioned her assertions that she had inserted "hundreds" of IV
lines into patients' breasts - Scalea said he had seen one in 30 years -
and that she had "missed" only twice when trying to insert an IV into a
patient's arm.

Based on the woman's account of the number of IVs she starts in a typical
workweek, the number of hours she works each week and the length of time
she has been a nursing assistant, Scalea calculated on the witness stand
that that would mean she had successfully inserted an IV line on the 1st
try 99.999 % of the time.

"Nobody's that good," the surgeon said. "Nothing in clinical medicine is
that good."

(source: Baltimore Sun)