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)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----MARYLAND
Rick Halperin Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:24:30 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----MARYLAND Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----MARYLAND Rick Halperin