Jan. 11
CALIFORNIA:
Drifter ordered to trial in arson death of San Diego homeless man
A drifter charged with stabbing a homeless man last year, bashing in his skull,
then setting him on fire along the San Diego River could face the death
penalty, a judge ruled Wednesday.
At the end of a 1-day preliminary hearing, Sergio Padilla Chavez, 26, was
ordered to stand trial on charges of 1st-degree murder, with a
special-circumstance allegation that the murder was committed during an arson.
The district attorney will make the decision on whether to seek the death
penalty at some future time, as Chavez's trial draws closer, Deputy District
Attorney Kyle Sutterley said.
Jose Hernandez, 63, died more than 6 weeks after the July 4 attack at his camp
along the river bottom in Grantville, near a Kaiser medical clinic off San
Diego Mission Road.
Hernandez died of pneumonia on Aug. 19, but the cause of his death was
determined to be complications from blunt head trauma, a forensic pathologist
testified Wednesday.
Dr. Vivian Snyder said Hernandez suffered skull fractures, burns over 15 % of
his body, and a scissors stab wound in his torso that caused him to be
hospitalized for weeks, leading to the pneumonia.
A San Diego police officer testified that after Chavez was arrested near the
scene of the fire, he made a statement in Spanish that he had lit the man on
fire.
A detective testified that Chavez and Hernandez, who camped near each other,
had been drinking beer and smoking crystal meth for hours before the 9 p.m.
assault.
Chavez told the detective that he showed his mother's photo to Hernandez,
saying she had died in a car crash when he was 8 years old. He said Hernandez
made a crack, saying with a serious face, "Oh, I killed her," followed by other
uncomplimentary comments.
The comments may have enraged Chavez. Sutterley said Chavez followed Hernandez
inside his tent, stabbed him, got a rock and hit him on the head, then tossed a
wooden pallet on top of the older man's tent.
He used a can of aerosol deodorant as a torch, igniting the spray over the
pallet.
Friends of Hernandez from other homeless encampments saw the flames and ran to
help, dragging him out of the incinerated tent. The friends testified that they
yelled for help. One man said he doused most of the flames with a water bottle
and by urinating on them.
At the end of the day, Superior Court Judge Sharon Majors-Lewis found there was
sufficient evidence against Chavez for him to stand trial.
(source: San Diego Union-Tribune)
WASHINGTON:
It's time to abolish the death penalty
It's been 15 years since Robert Yates, a 1970 graduate of Oak Harbor High
School, was sent to death row.
The serial killer confessed to killing 13 people and was convicted of killing 2
additional women. Most of the murders occurred in Spokane County, but he also
killed in Skagit, Walla Walla and Pierce counties.
It took more than a decade for Yates to exhaust his appeals, but then his
execution date was indefinitely postponed after Gov. Jay Inslee placed a
moratorium on executions. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson recently
re-introduced a bill that would do away with the death penalty altogether.
Lawmakers should pass the bill and clear up the uncertainty about the future of
state executions.
There are many reasons why the death penalty should be abolished.
It's unequally applied. Study after study has shown that people of color are
more likely to get the death penalty than white defendants.
"Black people make up 13 % of the population, but they make up 42 % of death
row and 35 % of those executed," the NAACP reports. "In addition, many studies
have found the race of the victim to affect who receives the death penalty,
with homicides of white victims more likely to result in the death penalty."
It's justice delayed.
Yates' experience is typical. Death row inmates average about 15 years between
conviction and execution. That means families of the victims have to wait
through all those painful years to learn the final resolution of a case.
It's expensive.
The taxpayers foot the bill for the costly death-penalty trials, the
multi-million dollar appeals process as well as all those years of waiting on
death row. There's a concern that prosecutors, particularly in smaller
counties, may make the decision of whether to pursue the death penalty based on
the budget.
There's a chance an innocent person will be executed.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that there's no way to know for
certain how many of the more than 1,450 people executed since 1976 were
innocent. There's strong evidence that at least 14 executed people were
innocent, the center reports. 9 of those cases were in Texas.
For these reasons and more, it's time for Washington state to close down death
row permanently.
(source: Opinion, Jessie Stensland, South Whidbey Record)
USA:
Dealing with medicines misuse in execution by lethal injection
It is time to debunk the myth that lethal injection is a humane procedure, and
remove medicines from the capital punishment process, says Maya Foa, director
of Reprieve, an international organisation that defends the human rights of
people vulnerable to the world's most powerful governments.
The Hague has been the location of many significant international events. A
small office in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs just welcomed a new
milestone. This time it was not a new treaty or convention, or a new precedent
in international criminal law, but a big step in the pharmaceutical sector's
efforts to stop the misuse of medicines for lethal injections.
On 27 September 2017, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) in the Netherlands published its assessment of pharmaceutical giant
Mylan's work to stop prisons using its drugs in executions[1]. New standards of
industry best practice have been established for implementing distribution
controls on drugs that could be used for execution.
The OECD's dialogue with Mylan started in March 2015 after the prominent Dutch
human rights lawyer Bart Stapert raised concerns that the company,
headquartered in the Netherlands, was not implementing the same strict controls
on the sale and distribution of its medicines as its competitors. Mylan
manufactures the anaesthetics midazolam and etomidate, and the paralytics
rocuronium bromide and vecuronium bromide, which have all been sought for use
in capital punishment in the United States (US).
This unique process brings together a wide range of interested parties. The
discussions, facilitated by the organisation's local office in The Hague,
involved not only Mylan and Mr Stapert, but also the pharmaceutical company's
major investors and expert stakeholders.
Things moved quickly. 6 months after the process began, in September 2015,
Mylan released a statement making clear for the 1st time that it did not
approve or authorise the use of its products for use in lethal injections[2].
Mylan also said it would change its contracts to legally restrict distributors
from selling its medicines to executing states.
But controls on the distribution of medicines are effective only if they are
implemented properly, especially while US states look for new drugs as current
stocks run out.
Recommendations for pharmaceutical companies
State officials will go to great lengths to hide the source of their lethal
injection, so constant vigilance and a proactive approach is necessary. In its
evaluation of Mylan's distribution controls, the OECD recommended steps for all
pharmaceutical companies to follow[1].
Companies should adopt a 'clear and unequivocal position' against secrecy laws
used by US states to hide the source of their execution drugs
First, companies should be proactive in adding drugs to restricted lists while
new lethal injection protocols emerge. 2nd, compliance should be monitored
through the supply chain using sales data with after-sales checks on a monthly
or bimonthly basis. 3rd, companies should adopt a "clear and unequivocal
position" against secrecy laws used by US states to hide the source of their
execution drugs. And 4th, manufacturers should contact officials in executing
states to inform them of their position.
The pharmaceutical industry is global; most manufacturers and distributors
operate across borders. The development of an international set of guidelines
on this issue is a significant step that will benefit manufacturers and
consumers around the world. The OECD work adds to other efforts by individual
companies to ensure that their life-saving medicines are not misused by
executing states.
Restriction of sales
Since 2011 - when the global drug maker Lundbeck became the first company to
comprehensively restrict the sale of its medicines to death row - more than 30
pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors have introduced supply chain
controls to stop their drugs being misused in lethal injection executions.
Every major manufacturer and supplier of drugs that US states have used in
executions has publicly stated their opposition.
Executing regions in the US began to have problems getting hold of the drugs to
be used for executions in 2010 when Hospira stopped producing the barbiturate
sodium thiopental, used widely as part of the lethal injection process. As
Departments of Corrections across the US searched for alternative supplies,
they found a British 1-man operation - Dream Pharma - based in an office at a
driving school in a west London suburb.
When the British government introduced export controls and shut off this route,
states sought supplies of sodium thiopental from India with the help of a
notorious middleman man, Chris Harris, who has no pharmaceutical background.
The Swiss company Naari - which manufactured sodium thiopental in India -
became aware that Nebraska had got hold of their drugs in 2012, and demanded
them back, noting that Harris was supposed to send them to Africa for medical
use but had instead diverted them to the US.
States switched to other drugs including pentobarbital, manufactured by
Lundbeck, but opposition across the industry was growing and the decision by
the multinational pharmaceutical company to restrict sales was just the start
of the opposition to the misuse of medicines in capital punishment.
By 2013, state officials started to look for alternative drug supplies and
settled on a range of new 2-or-3-drug cocktails, usually starting with the
sedative midazolam.
Botched executions
Over the following years, every state that used midazolam had what appeared to
be at least 1 botched execution. Inmates were not fully unconscious and were
therefore exposed to pain and suffering. Perhaps the most extreme example of
this was the execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014.
It took 43 minutes for Lockett to die and he was described as having groaned,
writhed and shouted out. There were multiple puncture wounds over his body
caused by the executioners' desperate attempts to insert more IV lines to give
him a higher dose of lethal drugs. We may never know the true extent of his
suffering because the curtain between the execution chamber and the witnesses
was closed as soon as it became obvious things were going badly wrong. This is
typical of the secrecy that shrouds the execution process in the US.
State legislatures across the US have introduced laws to hide the ways they
purchase their lethal injection drugs
As state legislatures across the US have introduced laws to hide the ways they
purchase their lethal injection drugs, industry efforts have extended beyond
just restricting sales.
Earlier in 2017, the major American pharmaceutical wholesaler McKesson launched
unprecedented legal action in the state of Arkansas, demanding the return of a
batch of the paralytic vecuronium bromide, which the state had purchased for
upcoming executions[3]. The company states that the Arkansas Department of
Correction "intentionally sought to circumvent McKesson's policies to procure
Pfizer's vecuronium bromide under the auspices that it would be used for
medical purposes". The case is ongoing in the Arkansas courts.
This concerted action reflects unanimous opposition across the pharmaceutical
industry to the use of medicines by prison officials in capital punishment
procedures - an application for which they were never designed, and which runs
fundamentally counter to their life-saving purpose.
Companies know that if their products are misused in executions, they face
costly litigation
It is no secret that there is a commercial imperative behind the companies'
opposition: after all, they know that if their products are misused in
executions, they face costly litigation, negative media coverage and divestment
by major shareholders.
The pharmaceutical industry makes medicines to save and improve patients'
lives, so, primarily, the use of these products to end lives is fundamentally
counter to the industry's objectives.
New combinations of drugs
In recent weeks, Florida has executed people with a combination of drugs that
has not been used before, replacing midazolam with etomidate. The global
pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson was quick to condemn the use of a
medicine it had developed.
On 14 November 2017, Nevada had planned to carry out its 1st execution in 11
years using an even more experimental cocktail that includes the opioid
fentanyl, which has become famous around the world for the addiction crisis it
has caused. However, the accused Scott Dozier made objections about the
selection of drugs that would end his life. The county court issued a stay, and
the case could lie in the hands of Nevada's supreme court.
I have worked with and consulted for almost every global pharmaceutical company
that has been affected by lethal injection issues. Constructive collaboration
and dialogue is the most effective way to achieve the ends we all seek: this is
the lesson I take from the OECD process. Mylan's positive engagement, and that
of its shareholders, in the establishment of these standards for industry best
practice shows what is possible when we work together.
The number of executions taking place in the US has reduced over time, from a
peak of 98 in 1999 to just 20 in 2016[4]. The decrease, in no small part, is
due to the reasoned and authoritative opposition of the pharmaceutical industry
to the misuse of their medicines in executions.
While officials continue to use underhand tactics to obtain drugs, the industry
must continue its proactivity in challenging misuse. Executions are not
legitimate medical procedures, yet the death penalty in the US has been partly
sustained through a pervasive myth that lethal injection is a humane,
medicalised procedure. It is time to debunk that myth and remove medicines from
the process of capital punishment altogether.
eferences:
[1] Ministry of Foreign Affairs. National Contact Point. OECD Guidelines for
Multinational Enterprises. Evalusation of the final statement of 11 April 2016:
Bart, attorney vs. Mylan. Available at:
https://www.oecdguidelines.nl/documents/publication/2017/09/27/evaluation-final-statement-
stapert-vs-mylan (accessed January 2018)
[2] Mylan Newsroom. Mylan statement on its policy against the use of Mylan
products in capital punishment. 30 September 2015. Available at:
http://newsroom.mylan.com/press-releases?item=123361 (accessed January 2018)
[3] McKesson. McKesson response to Arkansas Department of Correction's Planned
Executions. 20 April 2017. Available at:
http://www.mckesson.com/about-mckesson/newsroom/press-releases/2017/response-to-arkansas-
doc-planned-executions/ (accessed January 2018)
[4] Death Penalty Information Center. Executions by year. Available at:
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year (accessed January 2018)
Citation: The Pharmaceutical Journal, PJ January 2018 online, online | DOI:
10.1211/PJ.2018.20204051
(source: The Pharmaceutical Journal)
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