In 2011, a group of death row inmates sued the FDA to block the importation of sodium thiopental, a barbiturate that is highly effective in ensuring that lethal injection executions are nearly painless. Among the plaintiffs was Stephen Michael West.
As reported by The Tennessean:
West was sentenced to death for the 1986 stabbing deaths of Wanda Romines, 51, and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines, in their East Tennessee home. He also was convicted of raping Sheila.Investigators say the women had been tortured in front of one another before they died.
West and his co-plaintiffs succeeded in getting an injunction from the district court. That decision was affirmed in a dubious decision by the D.C. Circuit, Cook v. FDA, 733 F.3d 1 (2013). The government did not seek review by the D.C. Circuit en banc or the Supreme Court.
Tennessee remains unable to obtain barbiturates for execution to this day. It adopted instead a three-drug protocol using midazolam. Attacks on that protocol have largely failed, see Glossip v. Gross, 135 S.Ct. 2726 (2015). So while everyone agrees that barbiturates are the optimum drug for lethal injection, the anti-death-penalty bar's attack results in states going forward with drugs that are less than optimum, with some greater risk of pain, although how much greater is disputed.
West's challenge to Tennessee's midazolam protocol was rejected by the state courts, and this resolution was held binding in his civil suit in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court denied review yesterday, with no indication of a dissent.
West evidently believed his lawyers' claims about the risk of pain from the midazolam protocol. He chose the old electric chair instead. From the Tennessean story:
West gave his final words at 7:15 p.m. He was already strapped into the electric chair, with sponges around his legs.* * *Then prison staff removed his black glasses, doused him with salt water and covered his face with a black shroud. At 7:19, West's body stiffened as an electric current coursed through his body. His hands curled into fists, with his right pinky extended out.
Then he went limp.
Another round of electricity caused his body to tense up again before slumping back.
After that, he didn't move.
I do not wish a painful execution on any murderer. Death itself is as far as we should go, in my opinion. But it does not bother me if West suffered briefly. He certainly suffered vastly less than Wanda and Sheila Romines.
If murderers do suffer in midazolam executions or in the older alternatives they elect, let us be very clear where the blame for that lies. It is on the anti-death-penalty movement for blocking access to the optimum drugs and the Obama Administration Justice Department for failing to appeal the wrongly decided Cook decision. It is long past time to break down the barriers to the states' ability to obtain the optimum drugs for lethal injection.
When asked by prison officials (within a timeframe set by law) for his preference of method of execution of the court's sentence, West chose not to respond. He waited until 24 hours prior to the date and time set, and then asked for the electric chair. This strikes me as yet another attempt to delay his execution, the delay already 33 years. Certainly one can speculate that West thought the last minute request for the unused electric chair would cause a delay while the equipment was tested and serviced. This same strategy in fact worked for another condemned felon a month or two back, when he waited until the last minute to specify a method, an appellate court delayed his execution long enough for the actual warrant to expire. For all we know, West agreed to submit to the electric chair to help thwart future executions but submitting to what will no doubt be termed a barbaric means.
Both the guillotine and the gallows are essentially painless.