Advertisement

Tennessee killer’s execution is blocked

Share
Times Staff Writer

A federal judge in Nashville on Friday blocked the execution of a man who has been on Tennessee’s death row for more than 20 years, based on a challenge to the state’s new lethal injection procedure.

Attorneys for Philip Ray Workman demonstrated a likelihood of success on their claim that the protocol exposes their client “to a foreseeable and likely unnecessary risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering in violation of the Eight Amendment,” U.S. District Judge Todd J. Campbell wrote.

Campbell said he would hold a hearing May 14 on whether to issue a preliminary injunction barring all executions under the new protocol.

Advertisement

Workman, 53, was convicted in 1982 of killing a Memphis police officer. He was scheduled to be executed Wednesday.

Tennessee had issued its lethal injection protocol on Monday, following a 90-day moratorium on executions ordered by Gov. Phil Bredesen, who said the old procedure was a “sloppy, cut and paste job” laden with “deficiencies.”

Like three dozen other states that use lethal injection, Tennessee’s protocol -- both the old and the new -- calls for a three-drug cocktail. The first, sodium thiopental, is a fast-acting barbiturate that is supposed to render the inmate unconscious. The second, pancuronium bromide, paralyzes the inmate. The third, potassium chloride, stops the heart. Lawyers for death row inmates around the country have argued that corrections personnel have improperly administered the first drug and that inmates have suffered excessively painful deaths, which were shielded from witnesses because the condemned could not move or shout because of the effects of the second drug.

“Pancuronium bromide ... creates a chemical veil over the entire process and poses the risk of a torturous death by causing paralysis and asphyxiation without affecting consciousness, creating a risk that Mr. Workman will suffocate to death without any ability to move any muscle in his body,” attorney Kelley J. Henry wrote in challenging the execution plan.

The new protocol contains more detail than the old one. But Henry said it “provides for the procurement, mixing and administration of highly sensitive and unstable chemicals by poorly trained and unqualified personnel.”

In support of her position, which she submitted to the district court Thursday, Henry offered a lengthy declaration by Dr. Mark J.S. Heath -- a Columbia University anesthesiologist who has testified on behalf of condemned inmates around the country. The new protocol “does little to nothing to assure [the state] will reliably achieve humane executions,” Heath wrote.

Advertisement

Campbell, in halting Workman’s execution, emphasized that the new Tennessee protocol has no procedure for monitoring an inmate’s “level of consciousness” during the execution process.

Campbell noted that federal courts in California and Missouri, which use similar procedures, have issued stays of executions.

The Tennessee attorney general’s office opposed any delay, arguing that Workman’s lawyers had not filed a formal legal complaint against the new procedure. But Campbell said the attorneys had met the requirements for obtaining interim legal relief.

“The balance of relative harms among the parties” weighs in favor of Workman, Campell wrote.

“The public has an interest,” the judge added, “in assuring that the lethal injection protocol for Tennessee is constitutional. That process cannot be completed by the parties and the court prior to” Workman’s previously scheduled execution date.

Sharon Curtis-Flair, a spokeswoman for Tennessee Atty. Gen. Robert E. Cooper Jr., said her office would review the judge’s opinion before deciding whether to appeal.

Advertisement

Campbell’s order marked the sixth stay of execution granted to Workman.

henry.weinstein@latimes.com

Advertisement