THE LETHAL INJECTION PROTOCAL

Philip Ray Workman was executed in the Tennessee death chamber

on May 9, 2007.

Twenty-six years before, on August 5, 1981, Workman robbed a

Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis. He forced all the employees and a
customer into the manager’s office where he collected the day’s receipts into
a bag. See, Workman v. Bredesen, ____ F.3d _____, 2007 WL 1311330 (6th
Cir. Tenn.) [May 7, 2007].

Workman was not aware that one of the employees had set off a silent
alarm. As the robber walked out of the fast food establishment, he was
confronted by a police lieutenant. In the ensuing moments, Workman broke
free from the police and killed the lieutenant with a .45 caliber bullet in the
chest. He managed to wound another officer before briefly escaping. An
extensive search captured him a short time later. Id.

He was tried, convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to death in

1982. He survived five previous execution dates before he was put to death
by lethal injection on May 9.

Workman’s “last meal” request that a vegetarian pizza be given to a

homeless person was denied by prison officials. But Workman supporters
and scores of death penalty opponents donated thousands of pizzas to
homeless shelters to honor the condemned man’s final request.

Under Tennessee’s new lethal injection procedures, the death protocol

of Phillip Ray Workman took seventeen minutes to complete.

“I’ve prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ not to lay charge of my death to
any man,” he said in his final statement.

Two minutes after the lethal injection of drugs commenced, the

condemned inmate said: “I commend my spirit unto your hands, Lord Jesus
Christ.”
 Workman’s case drew national attention in the final week of his life
after a U.S. District Court issued a temporary restraining barring prison
officials from carrying out the condemned man’s execution after he argued
to the court that he feared that he would suffer physical pain during the
execution process.

A month earlier the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a

“research letter” that said inmates previously executed in the United States
may have experienced awareness and physical suffering because they were
not properly sedated.

A “lethal injection” in the United States generally consists of three

drugs: sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride.
Sodium thiopental is administered first. It serves as an anesthesia, depriving
the brain of oxygen and producing unconsciousness. Pancuronium bromide
is the second chemical administered. It paralyzes the skeletal muscles which
effectively immobilizes the condemned inmate and prevents him from being
able to move or speak. Potassium chloride stops the heart, depriving it of
oxygen and literally suffocates it to death.

One authors of The Lancet research paper was Leonidas Koniaris,

University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. Koniaris, and his
colleagues, studied lethal injection protocols in Texas and Virginia where
nearly half of the more than 1,000 U.S. executions since 1976 were carried
out. They discovered that medical technicians carrying out the executions in
these two states had no training in anesthesia; that the executions were not
monitored for anesthesia; and that there was no post-execution review. The
researchers also analyzed autopsy toxicology reports on 49 condemned
inmates executed in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
These reports revealed that the amount of sodium thiopental was lower in
the blood of 43 of these condemned inmates than is required for surgery;
and, more disturbingly, that 21 of them had such low concentrations of the
drug it indicated an “awareness” of pain during the execution process. In
other words, the condemned inmates probably suffered an excruciating
death, experiencing the horrendous pain of their hearts being suffocated.

The Tennessee three-drug protocol is used in thirty states to carry out

lethal injections. These protocols have come under increasing scrutiny by the
courts as reports like The Lancet “research paper” continue to question the
efficacy of this method of carrying out the death penalty.
 Three months before Workman’s execution the Governor of
Tennessee issued an executive order suspending the state’s existing lethal
injection protocol and ordered the Department of Corrections to issue a
revised protocol by May 2, 2007. The Governor was determined to satisfy
not only the intense political pressure being brought to bear to have the
“cop-killer” put to death but to have the execution carried out in a manner
that would not offend capital punishment opponents and produce the
sensational media headlines the State of Florida has experienced for its
repeated “botched” executions.

Tennessee abandoned the electric chair as its official mode of

execution in 1998 and adopted what has been called the more “humane
approach” of lethal injection. The Department of Corrections on April 30,
2007 report adopted the same three-drug protocol originally implemented in
1998. This drug/chemical protocol involves the following dosages: 5 grams
of sodium thiopental, followed by 100 milligrams of pancuronium bromide,
and, finally, 200 mill equivalents of potassium chloride.

The April 30 DOC report said that the 5-gram dose of sodium
thiopental “reduces oxygen flow to the brain and causes respiratory
depression.” The level of barbiturate, according to the DOC report, quickly
anesthetizes the condemned inmate’s brain and is a sufficient dosage by
itself to produce death.

The report said that pancuronium bromide is a “muscle paralytic” that

assists “in the suppression of breathing and ensure[s] death.” The report
noted that the 100 milligrams of this chemical is also sufficient by itself to
inflict death. This paralytic chemical is used not only because it reportedly
hastens death but it also “prevents involuntary muscular movement that may
interfere with the proper functioning of the IV equipment” and create an
indelible impression of physical suffering.

Finally, the DOC report said that potassium chloride, a salt, interferes
with heart function, resulting in “cardiac arrest and rapid death.”

The DOC report concluded with the finding that sodium thiopental,
when administered properly, anesthetizes the condemned inmate before the
other two chemicals are administered ensuring that he does not feel any
physical pain or suffering.
 The “three-drug protocol” utilized by the State of Tennessee to put
Phillip Ray Workman to death was created more than thirty years ago by an
Oklahoma medical examiner named Dr. A. Jay Chapman. He was
instrumental in Oklahoma becoming the first state to abandon the electric
chair in favor of lethal injection as the official method for executing
condemned inmates.

Over the last three decades 36 other states (six of which do not
employ the three-drug protocol), the Federal government, and the U.S.
Military have adopted lethal injection as the way to “put down” condemned
inmates. More than 900 such inmates have been executed by lethal injection
in the United States.

In addition to the toxicology reports which showed that some

condemned inmates were not adequately anesthetized with sodium
thiopental, studies have criticized the three-drug protocol because
veterinarians no longer use pancuronium bromide to euthanize animals,
feeling that it is inhumane and produces a painful death. There have also
been reports of people who underwent surgery, effectively immobilized by a
paralytic drug but not adequately sedated with sodium thiopental, who
suffered extreme pain during the surgical procedure.

Opponents of pancuronium bromide argue that there is no need for the

chemical to be used in the execution process. They charge its use conceals
valuable information from the public and media about the execution itself. In
other words, it prevents an inmate from crying out in pain, just as those who
underwent surgery without proper sedation could not cry out in pain to alert
doctors that they were not properly anesthetized. State officials counter that
they need the chemical to prevent involuntary muscular movement which,
alone, would signal some kind of pain and suffering.

Once Oklahoma adopted lethal injection, other death penalty states

quickly joined the “humane execution” bandwagon. Their legislative
decisions followed a series of terribly botched executions in the electric
chair and gas chamber: John Spenkelink in Florida in 1979 (electric chair),
John Louis Evans in Alabama in 1983 (electric chair), and Jimmy Lee Gray
in Mississippi in 1983 (gas chamber).
 Nebraska is the only state that maintains the electric chair as an
official method of execution – and its refusal to adopt lethal injection
currently appears to be the wisest, most humane decision.

In the electrocution protocol, a 500-volt charge of electricity was

administered to the condemned inmate. It was held in place for 30 seconds
before being reduced. A second 2500-volt charge of electricity was
administered for one minute before being reduced. A final 500-volt charge
of electricity was administered for 30 seconds before being reduced. A two-
minute procedure to complete the execution.

The first charge of electricity directly into the brain immediately

rendered the condemned inmate unconscious and he was almost certainly
dead before the second 2500-volt charge was administered. Common
experience, and medical expertise, instructs that high voltage electricity
knocks people unconscious and produces an almost instaneous death.

An electrocution protocol was much simpler than a lethal injection

protocol. Condemned inmates were escorted from a nearby holding cell,
allowed to make a final statement to witnesses, and strapped in the chair.
The strapping-in-the-chair procedure took less than a minute. Altogether, the
walk from the holding cell, final statement, placement in their chair, and
administering three high voltages of electricity took from 5 to 7 minutes.

The lethal injection protocol is much longer, involving more physical

and emotional distress – for both condemned inmate and staff. Condemned
inmates are strapped to the gurney at least a hour before the actual execution
begins. Medical technicians must probe and puncture for a good vein in
which to insert the needle. And even after the drugs/chemicals are
administered, it takes anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes before the inmate is
pronounced dead.

Phillip Ray Workman, for example, was lucid two minutes after the
sodium thiopental was administered. The Tennessee April 30 DOC report
said that 5 grams of sodium thiopental would induce immediate
unconsciousness. It didn’t produce unconsciousness in Workman until after
the two-minute mark. Had Workman been put to death in the electric chair,
he would have been dead moments after the first high voltage charge of
electricity hit his brain.
 There is no nice, humane way to kill a human being. Some
conservative radio talk show hosts have said the issue of how condemned
inmates die should not even be an issue for social discussion. Nazi Germany,
who believed that Jews were as criminal as those individuals currently on
death row in this country, shared the same philosophy as these hard-bitten
radio talk heads.

The doctor who invented the guillotine did so in an effort to devise a

humane way to put people to death. He was horror-stricken when he saw
how his invention was ultimately used in French society. Lethal injection
will one day stand alongside the guillotine as a failed experiment in how to
humanely kill people.

How a society chooses to kill the worst in its midst reflects its
conscience. Killing without remorse, whether by an individual psychopath
or a state, is equally horrific. Capital punishment is not about “just desserts.”
It’s about revenge, pure and simple. Make no mistake about that. And when
a society can put human beings to death with drugs and chemicals that inflict
indescribable pain and suffering without remorse, revenge has paralyzed its
soul.