State Readies for 1st Execution by Lethal Injection

By JACK CHEEVERS

Jan. 15, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

One minute past midnight on Jan. 26, an anonymous executioner at San Quentin is scheduled to inject massive overdoses of drugs into William Kirkpatrick Jr. as he lies strapped atop a table.

The drugs first will anesthetize Kirkpatrick, then paralyze his muscles. Finally they will stop his heart, making the convicted killer of two Burbank fast-food workers the first prisoner in California to die by lethal injection.

As death row populations have swelled in recent years, lethal injection has spread rapidly among the states, largely displacing electric chairs, gas chambers and other traditional ways of ending lives of the condemned.

Thirty-two of the 38 states that allow capital punishment now use lethal injection as their primary method of execution or give prisoners the option of dying that way, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C., group. Of the 56 people executed in the United States last year, only seven died by other means.

The California Legislature voted in 1992 to permit lethal injections in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the state’s gas chamber as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. A federal district judge in San Francisco agreed and ordered San Quentin’s gas chamber closed in 1994. State attorneys have appealed.

Throughout the history of capital punishment, each new killing device has been hailed at its introduction as more modern and less barbaric than the last, and lethal injection is no exception. Proponents call it a swift, sure and virtually painless method that avoids the ghastly spectacles of prisoners choking in gas chambers or burning in malfunctioning electric chairs.

“When that first [drug] dose hits them, some of them you can hear snore,” said Larry Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the Texas prison system, which has executed 104 condemned inmates by injection since 1982, more than any other state. “They’re gone. The whole process takes two minutes.”

“This, for lack of a better word, is almost clinical,” he said. “Our death chamber . . . could pass for an emergency room. It has that type of look about it. If people think there’s a muscle reaction or twitching, it just doesn’t happen, other than the lungs collapsing and you hear a rush of air. Other than that, it looks like someone’s going to sleep.”

For state legislators who support the death penalty, that is the appeal of lethal injection: Because it looks more humane, juries and judges are more likely to impose capital punishment.

But lethal injection has critics as well. They say that some condemned inmates have suffered badly and that the method is an effort to camouflage the horror of state-sponsored killing by making it seem almost like a routine medical procedure.

“The state is trying to make us feel comfortable about something we don’t feel comfortable about,” said Diann Rust-Tierney of the ACLU, which opposes capital punishment in any form. “I think it’s insidious.”

Indeed, as prisoners lie on gurneys, hooked to cardiac monitors and intravenous lines, they could almost be mistaken for patients awaiting surgery. Moreover, the drugs used in lethal injections are commonly used in hospital operating rooms.

With execution by poison gas in legal limbo, San Quentin officials have removed the twin chairs from the prison’s green-tinted gas chamber and installed a table similar to those on which physicians examine patients.

Barring a reprieve, Kirkpatrick will be bound to that table and two needles will be inserted in his arms; one is a backup in case the first becomes blocked. At the order of Warden Arthur Calderon, an executioner in an adjoining room--his identity secret--will begin dripping three drugs into an intravenous tube connected to the inmate.

Kirkpatrick, 35, was sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of two young Taco Bell workers in Burbank during a robbery that netted him about $625. A former employee of the restaurant, he was angry at having been transferred to a different Taco Bell, according to court papers. He told the U.S. Supreme Court in an obscenity-riddled letter in July that he was guilty, felt no remorse and wanted to be executed.

If all goes according to plan, the first drug that enters his body, sodium pentothal, will quickly render him unconscious. The second drug is pancuronium bromide, a synthetic form of curare, used by South American Indians as poison on arrow tips for hunting. That will paralyze all his muscles.

The third chemical, potassium chloride, will stop his heart, ensuring rapid death, according to state prison officials.

But no mode of execution is fail-safe, as history shows.

During the 1990 electrocution of Jesse Joseph Tafero in Florida, a synthetic sponge in a headpiece caught fire and flames erupted around his shaved head. A 17-year-old convicted murderer, Willie Francis, survived an attempted execution in Louisiana’s electric chair in 1946. He died after being electrocuted a second time a year later.

And death penalty opponents cite a number of problem-plagued lethal injections in recent years.

In 1985, Texas prison medics jabbed needles into the limbs of Stephen Peter Morin, a convicted killer of three women, for nearly 45 minutes in search of a suitable vein. They finally found one in his right arm, and he was pronounced dead 11 minutes later. A prison spokesman said Morin’s veins were scarred and badly damaged from years of drug abuse.

In 1988, an intravenous tube funneling lethal fluids into the arm of another Texas convict with a history of drug abuse sprang a leak, spewing chemicals toward witnesses.

Prison officials drew a curtain to block the view of witnesses. Murmurs and at least one groan were heard before the curtain was reopened and Raymond Landry was seen motionless with his eyes half-closed. A few minutes later, two doctors declared him dead. His lawyer said the incident “had to be absolute hell” for Landry.

Witnesses also have reported convicts writhing and gasping in apparent agony as lethal chemicals entered their bodies.

After seeing the 1992 Oklahoma execution of convicted murderer Robyn Leroy Parks, a newspaper reporter described it as “scary and ugly.”

The reporter, Wayne Greene of the Tulsa World, said Parks reacted violently when the drugs hit his system, convulsions surging through muscles in his jaw, neck and abdomen.

“He was strapped down to the table, and as much as he could, his back arched, and he was breathing out very heavily,” Greene said in a 1993 interview with a Phoenix newspaper. “It may have been completely humane to the inmate. We’ll never know. For appearance’s sake, it looked painful and inhumane.”

Michael L. Radelet, a University of Florida sociology professor who compiled a widely publicized list of 11 problem injections in Texas, Arkansas and other states, said the method “is the most commonly botched form of execution in the U.S.”

But Texas prison spokesman Fitzgerald said there were no difficulties in the 16 injection executions he has witnessed.

“Every one I’ve seen has been just bam, bam, bam,” he said.

The growing use of lethal injection also has proven troubling to many doctors and nurses, who practice under ethics codes that prohibit them from harming those they treat. A number of major medical groups, including the American Medical Assn. and American Nurses Assn., forbid members to participate in executions.

But 23 states with death penalty laws require physicians to determine or pronounce death, and 28 require that a doctor at least be present at executions, according to a 1994 report by the American College of Physicians and other organizations.

The report said doctors took part in several recent executions, including a 1993 Washington state hanging in which a physician checked the condemned’s height and weight to determine how much rope was needed to kill him instantly.

While they refuse to participate, some physicians question if prison executioners--who are usually not doctors and have only medic training--are administering adequate doses of drugs and doing so in the right order.

Dr. Edward A. Brunner, chief of anesthesiology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, said that sodium pentothal wears off quickly and that if an inmate didn’t receive enough, he could wake up with his muscles paralyzed and unable to breathe.

“The patient . . . is strangling to death but is unable to respond,” he said, adding that state protocols for giving such drugs often do not take into account differences in convicts’ body mass, which can effect how drugs are absorbed.

Christine May, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections, said a state prison doctor will attend Kirkpatrick’s execution. But the needles will be inserted and drugs released by prison staffers who are not physicians, although they are trained to place intravenous lines, she said.

Kirkpatrick will receive massive overdoses of each of the three drugs, any one of which will be sufficient to kill him, May said.

Dr. Wilson Wilhite, vice chairman of anesthesiology at UCLA Medical School, said the procedure will ensure a painless death within minutes for Kirkpatrick.

Lethal injection produces a far less agonizing death than the gas chamber, he said, because poison gas acts slowly to severely irritate the lungs, while sodium pentothal induces sleep rapidly and “is actually very pleasant.”

In cases in which witnesses have seen inmates’ bodies heaving and contorting, the potassium chloride may have hit the heart before the other drugs took complete effect, causing a physical reaction, he said.

Regardless of the physiological effects of lethal injection, prison officials said that in the final analysis, scientific-looking syringes, tubes and chemicals are just another way to kill society’s most feared members.

“Some people want it to be almost antiseptic . . . [but] execution is execution,” said former San Quentin Warden Dan Vasquez.

“You can’t sugarcoat execution. Just like you can’t sugarcoat premeditated murder.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Death by Lethal Injection

If William Kirkpatrick Jr.’s scheduled execution at San Quentin State Prison on Jan. 26 is carried out, he will become the first person executed by lethal injection in California. The chamber at San Quentin used for lethal gas execution will be converted by replacing the chairs with a table, on which Kirkpatrick will be strapped. There are specific procedures the state must carry out when executing an inmate by lethal injection:

The Chemicals

Before the execution, syringes containing the following are prepared:

* 20 cc of sterile normal saline

* 50 cc of potassium chloride

* 50 cc of pancuronium bromide

* 5.0 grams of socium pentothal in 20-25 cc of diluent

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[1] Inmate is connected to a cardiac monitor, which is overseen by an attending physician.

[2] An IV is started in two of the inmate’s usable veins (one line is a backup in case of IV blockage or malfunction). A flow of saline solution is slowly administered.

[3] Door is closed and warden issues execution order.

[4] Sodium pentathol, a strong tranquilizer, is administered by physician via a syringe and then line is flushed with saline solution. This is followed by pancurion bromide, which paralyzes all muscles, and finally potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

[5] Physician declares death when it occurs.

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Execution chamber: An octagonal vacuum chamber, about 7.5 feet in diameter. It is entered through a large oval door at the rear of the chamber.

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Witnesses

Up to 50 persons may witness an execution, including the following:

News media representatives: 17

State witnesses: 9

Staff escorts: 4

Warden: 1

Attorney General: 1

Reputable citizens: 12