In its hurry to use its final days in power to execute federal prisoners, the administration of President Donald Trump has trampled over an array of barriers, both legal and practical, according to court records that have not been previously reported.
Officials gave public explanations for their choice of which prisoners should die that misstated key facts from the cases. They moved ahead with executions in the middle of the night. They left one prisoner strapped to the gurney while lawyers worked to remove a court order. They executed a second prisoner while an appeal was still pending, leaving the court to then dismiss the appeal as “moot” because the man was already dead. They bought drugs from a secret pharmacy that failed a quality test. They hired private executioners and paid them in cash.
[...]
For unclear reasons, BOP planned to have the executions carried out by two private contractors, rather than government employees. The government won’t disclose the contractors’ names or profession. [...] “If we didn’t pay them in cash,” a BOP lawyer said in a deposition, “they probably wouldn’t participate.”
[...]
The push to resume federal executions for the first time since 2003 long predates Barr, with groundwork beginning as far back as 2011 and accelerating after Trump took office in 2017. [...] Trump himself [...] encouraged the executions and declined to commute them.
[...]
“Death penalty all the way,” Trump said at a February 2016 camnpaign event in New Hampshire. “I’ve always supported the death penalty. I don’t even understand people that don’t.”
[...]
Throughout the campaign they highlighted the executions as a contrast to Joe Biden’s opposition to the death penalty, reinforcing Trump’s “law and order” message.
ProPublica
Law and order for some.
The Justice Department has killed 10 people since July, with three more executions scheduled before Biden’s inauguration.
[...]
The Trump administration has executed more federal prisoners than any presidency since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s. Roosevelt was president for 12 years, and his total includes six saboteurs who were tried by a military commission.
A slim and shrinking majority of Americans support capital punishment, according to public polling. But it remains popular with Republicans, especially white evangelicals.
The pro-life people.
“Doctors are experts in unkilling, we are not experts in killing,” said Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist at Emory University who has testified that lethal injection of pentobarbital simulates death by drowning. “This is why lethal injection is so problematic. It impersonates a medical act, but it’s not about medicine at all. Killing is not a treatment. An execution chamber is not an operating room.”
The Justice Department would later claim that “BOP consulted with medical professionals” (plural). That is not exactly true. BOP engaged two expert witnesses. The first, Craig W. Lindsley, is a professor of chemistry and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. He is not a physician or licensed care provider; he has a Ph.D., not an M.D.
I'll try to remember that the
next time some Trumpie says Jill Biden isn't a doctor.
BOP’s second expert witness was a medical doctor: retired California anesthesiologist Joseph F. Antognini. Antognini has said he personally opposes the death penalty as a Catholic. But he also said he believes states have a right to his advice, comparing it to criminal defendants’ right to a lawyer.
Antognini has not addressed how he squares his testimony supporting executions with his Hippocratic oath. He did raise ethical considerations when he was asked to compare lethal injection to poison gas (a comparison between methods, like the one Lindsley made). “Recommending one method of execution over another, I guess that’s an ethical issue for me,” he said in a deposition.
[...]
Antognini charges $400 an hour, $2,000 for a deposition, $4,000 per day in court and $2,000 per travel day.
Antognini has some loose ethics.
Reached by phone, Antognini said he was busy and agreed to talk at a later time. When that time came, Antognini declined to comment. “I wish you all a very merry Christmas,” he said, and hung up.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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