February 21, 2011 | 9:50 AM | By

Execution Drugs: Allegations emerge that British drugs failed

FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Capital Punishment, Execution Drugs, Sodium Thiopental

Emmanuel Hammond

The anti-death penalty group Reprieve is claiming that drugs used to execute three inmates in the United States failed to properly work. These executions all utilized sodium thiopental imported from Dream Pharma, a wholesale drug distributer in London. Sodium thiopental is used by many states to put an inmate to sleep before he or she is killed using a paralyzing drug and a heart-stopping drug. Since it became known that states, including California, were importing the anesthetic, there has been controversy over its quality–particularly since the FDA has declined to get involved and either approve or disapprove the foreign drug. Those advocating for death row inmates have said that if the anesthetic doesn’t work, that an inmate can experience excruciating pain while dying, a possible violation of the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, Reprieve claims that the drug in fact did not adequately put Jeffrey Landrigan of Arizona, and Emmanuel Hammond and Brandon Rhode of Georgia to sleep. According to the UK Daily Mail, the group will launch a legal campaign against the British equivalent of the FDA, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, tomorrow in an attempt to recall the drug. In an effort to verify Reprieve’s claims, the Mail interviewed three witnesses to the execution of Hammond, who raped and murdered Julie Love in 1988:

All said that he remained conscious as he was put to death on January 24.

Professor Sheri Johnson, of Cornell University law school, a member of Hammond’s legal team, said she stared at him throughout as she knew the previous prisoner to be executed using the Dream Pharma thiopental – Rhode – had kept his eyes open throughout and had not lost consciousness.

Prof Johnson said: ‘He closed his eyes perhaps ten seconds after the drugs started. But then, some time later, he opened them again. Perhaps one or two minutes after that, his mouth screwed up to one side. It looked painful, as if it could be a grimace of pain.’

Reporter Josh Green also said Hammond first closed and then reopened his eyes some time after receiving the thiopental. Later, he wrote, he observed Hammond give out ‘short bursts of breath that lifted his lips’.

Jill Rand, a Florida nurse who became Hammond’s penfriend, said that she too saw him move his lips.

Several witnesses also said Rhode, 31 – who murdered three members of the same family in 2000 – kept his eyes open throughout.

A lawsuit in the United States against the FDA is also underway, which alleges that the FDA acted inappropriately when it allowed imports of sodium thiopental to go ahead. Meanwhile, the sole US manufacturer of sodium thiopental–which stopped manufacturing the drug in 2009, causing a nationwide shortage–announced they’re discontinuing the product. States, faced with the task of carrying out executions in the midst of drug shortage and legal battles, have turned to the Department of Justice for legal advice on how to obtain sodium thiopental or an alternative drug.

California, which has over a half-kilo of sodium thiopental imported from Britain, has said it will send a sample of the drug to an independent laboratory for quality testing.

  • Dolmance

    Our natural deaths are going to be far more prolonged and infinitely more uncomfortable than anything this rapist/murderer went through.

  • Anonymous

    He opened his eyes and twisted a lip and that’s pain. Pin you fools was the rape and torture Julie and other women endured at the hands of that beast – who THANK GOD received his final judgement on earth and a very short meeting with God before being shown the door to hell. You reprieve people are wasting money…when there are “devils” on earth like Emmanuel Hammond – they should be executed immediately following their guilty plea. And, I think that all criminals should have a chance to watch the execution…