A week before convicted inmate David Hosier was put to death by lethal injection, the Missouri Department of Corrections agreed to make several adjustments to his execution, including providing a local anesthetic and sedative, to satisfy his legal team to avoid disputes and lawsuits that could stall the case. According to a source familiar with the negotiations.
Reaching such an agreement without litigation is not typical, sources said, raising questions about why it was done in this case.
As part of the negotiations, the DOC also set parameters on how the execution team at the state prison in Bonne Terre could administer a lethal dose of pentobarbital to the 69-year-old Hosier. Missouri’s current execution protocol requires the placement of primary and secondary intravenous lines but offers no guidance on how far staff can go to find a suitable vein, leaving inmates open to a “cutdown procedure,” a surgical method in which tissue is cut and tweezers are used to pry the tissue from a vein for an injection.
The state DOC’s agreement with Hosier’s legal team promised to use less invasive techniques first, and if a cutback became necessary, a local anesthetic would be administered — which the execution protocol does not currently call for. No cut was made in Hosier’s case, but in the rare cases where prisoners have survived execution attempts, they have described these attempts to start IV lines as excruciating.
The Missouri DOC did not respond to a request for comment.
Hosier, who was on death row for the 2009 murders of his ex-lover and her husband, was hospitalized in May and diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, which causes a very irregular pulse. He was pronounced dead at 6.11pm on Tuesday, 11 minutes after the procedure began.
The DOC negotiated the accommodation out of court with Hosier’s legal team – a contrast to the events leading up to the execution of death row inmate Brian Dorsey in April. Missouri officials agreed to let Dorsey receive a local anesthetic before putting him to death by lethal injection, but that was only after his legal team filed a lawsuit for the property and reached a settlement.
Dorsey’s attorneys worried that the execution team would have difficulty accessing a vein and would have to resort to a cut because he was obese, diabetic and a former intravenous drug user.
“We received ample assurances that Dorsey would not be hurt,” Arin Brenner, a federal public defender who represented Dorsey, said Wednesday.
Missouri’s execution protocol does not rule out the possibility of using these procedures, despite them being more invasive. In the court filings in Dorsey’s case, the DOC said that “medical personnel have rarely, if ever, used a venous cut-down procedure to establish IV access during executions.” It is unclear how many other states have included provisions for budget cuts in their execution protocols because execution processes are closely guarded.
The contents of the settlement between Dorsey and the DOC are sealed, but attorneys for Dorsey were able to share the information with other federal defenders representing clients on Missouri’s death row, opening the door for them to request the same accommodation, according to a source on Dorsey’s legal team.
Although housing takes place for prisoners facing execution, these negotiations are often sealed by a judge. It is unclear why, if several inmates have received this accommodation, Missouri has not added it to the official execution protocol. When changes to execution protocols are adopted, death row inmates can challenge that new protocol in court – which can delay the execution of sentences.
“The entire process is still largely shrouded in secrecy,” said Cheryl Pilate, an attorney representing Russell Bucklew, the Missouri death row inmate who was put to death by lethal injection in 2019.
Bucklew, who had a rare medical condition that caused blood-filled tumors in his head, neck and throat, was given special adjustments when he was executed, including first anesthetizing him with Valium and lifting his stretcher to prevent him from suffocating in his blood. .
The Rev. Jeff Hood, Hosier’s spiritual adviser who witnessed the execution, told NBC News that the Missouri execution squad adhered to the accommodation agreement.
“David mentioned both a local anesthetic and a sedative from the gurney,” Hood said, saying Hosier was given the anesthetic before the IV lines were inserted and was dizzy from the sedative before his death.
Hood, an opponent of the death penalty, called on the state to make these adjustments universal.
“The state of Missouri has made it a priority that their citizens who are executed will from now on receive the exact same accommodations that David was afforded,” he said.
Hosier’s attorneys declined to comment.
Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project and special counsel at the nonprofit law firm Phillips Black, said states do not often deviate from their lethal injection protocols, but that this can happen occasionally, either out of convenience or to to meet the needs of an inmate. needs, or as a result of human error.
Sometimes it can be particularly egregious, Dunham said, such as when Oklahoma executed inmate Charles Warner in 2015 while taking the wrong drugs as part of a three-drug regimen — and almost did it again in the case of death row inmate Richard Glossip.
He added that it is up to the prisoner being executed to request accommodations that they believe will reduce their pain, and that prisoners often take legal action if they believe states’ protocols violate their constitutional rights.
“If the goal is to avoid as much necessary pain and suffering as possible, then states should have the flexibility to do that,” Dunham said.
However, the behind-the-scenes shifts in execution protocols have also been challenged in court in other states. Kentucky hasn’t executed anyone in more than a decade amid arguments over the state’s protocols.
Hosier, a Navy veteran and EMT, was convicted of the fatal shooting of Angela Gilpin, his former lover, and her husband, Rodney, while maintaining his innocence due to a lack of eyewitnesses, fingerprints or DNA evidence linking him to the crime scene .
Prosecutors, however, portrayed him as a scorned ex bent on revenge.
There are currently twelve inmates on Missouri’s death row. The state’s next execution is scheduled for September.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
