Judge Mulls Arizona Prisoner’s Request to Delay Execution

By JACQUES BILLEAUD, Related Press

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal choose is contemplating whether or not to postpone the execution of an Arizona prisoner who argues the state’s dying penalty procedures would violate his rights by subjecting him to unimaginable ache.

Attorneys for Frank Atwood stated their consumer would bear excruciating struggling if he had been strapped to the execution gurney whereas mendacity on his again as a result of he has a degenerative spinal situation that has left him in a wheelchair. Atwood is scheduled to be lethally injected Wednesday for his homicide conviction within the 1984 killing of 8-year-old Vicki Hoskinson.

At a court docket listening to Friday, Atwood’s legal professionals questioned whether or not the compounded pentobarbital for use within the execution meets pharmaceutical requirements and whether or not the state has met a requirement that the drug’s expiration date falls after the execution date. In addition they are difficult Arizona’s protocol for fuel chamber executions.

Prosecutors say Atwood is attempting to indefinitely postpone his execution by authorized maneuvers.

Choose Michael Liburdi stated he’ll probably subject an order over the weekend.

Two weeks in the past, Atwood declined to decide on between deadly injection or the fuel chamber, leaving him to be put to dying by deadly injection, the state’s default execution methodology.

Although he didn’t decide the fuel chamber, he’s nonetheless difficult the state’s deadly fuel protocol that requires the usage of hydrogen cyanide fuel, which was utilized in some previous U.S. executions and by Nazis to kill 865,000 Jews on the Auschwitz focus camp alone. His legal professionals say hydrogen cyanide fuel is unconstitutional and produces agonizing ranges of ache in executions.

With out explicitly saying Atwood needs to die by the fuel chamber, his legal professionals argue he has a proper to decide on between strategies of execution which might be constitutional and stated the state ought to swap its deadly fuel from hydrogen cyanide fuel to nitrogen fuel as a result of nitrogen would produce painless deaths.

“They may try this tomorrow,” Joseph Perkovich, one in all Atwood’s attorneys, stated about nitrogen fuel.

Arizona, California, Missouri and Wyoming are the one states with decades-old lethal-gas execution legal guidelines nonetheless on the books. Arizona, which carried out the final fuel chamber execution in the US greater than 20 years in the past, is the one state to nonetheless have a working fuel chamber.

In recent times, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama have handed legal guidelines permitting executions with nitrogen fuel, at the very least in some circumstances, although specialists say it has by no means been achieved and no state has established a protocol that may permit it.

Atwood’s legal professionals additionally stated Arizona might take up executions by firing squad — a way of execution not used within the state.

Prosecutors say Atwood’s problem will not be aimed toward minimizing the ache he’ll really feel when he’s put to dying, however slightly to delay the execution indefinitely by requesting different strategies of execution that he is aware of the state is unable to supply with out modifications to its execution protocol and the state structure.

Prosecutors say Atwood can alleviate ache brought on by mendacity on his again by propping himself up with a pillow and utilizing the lean perform on the execution desk. They are saying he will likely be allowed to proceed taking ache drugs and will likely be offered a light sedative earlier than his execution.

Arizona prosecutors additionally stated nitrogen fuel stays untested in executions and that Atwood’s attorneys hadn’t established that nitrogen fuel or a firing squad would cut back the chance of extreme ache.

Jeffrey Sparks, a lawyer for the state, argued Atwood’s authorized claims about deadly fuel are moot, saying the execution will likely be carried out by deadly injection.

Authorities have stated Atwood kidnapped Hoskinson, whose stays had been found within the desert northwest of Tucson almost seven months after her disappearance. Consultants couldn’t decide the reason for dying from the stays that had been discovered, in keeping with court docket information.

Atwood maintains that he’s harmless.

Final week, a federal appeals court docket denied a request by Atwood’s legal professionals to make new arguments in a bid to overturn his dying sentence.

Atwood’s legal professionals have stated that final summer season they found an FBI memo describing an nameless caller claiming to have seen the lady in a automobile not related to Atwood, however which might be linked to a girl. A panel of the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals stated it couldn’t conclude that the disclosure of the unreported nameless name would have had any impact on Atwood’s trial and conviction.

On Friday, Atwood’s legal professionals additionally requested the Arizona Supreme Court docket to remain his execution, making related arguments about what they stated was new proof of his innocence associated to the girl.

Till final month, Arizona went virtually eight years with out finishing up an execution.

The hiatus has been attributed to the problem of securing deadly injection medication as producers refuse to produce them and to issues encountered throughout the July 2014 execution of Joseph Wooden, who was given 15 doses of a two-drug mixture over almost two hours. Wooden snorted repeatedly and gasped earlier than he died. His legal professional stated the execution had been botched.

The hiatus ended on Might 11 when the state executed Clarence Dixon for his homicide conviction within the 1978 killing of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old Arizona State College pupil.

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