Virginia set to execute man using 'potentially torturous' drug cocktail
William Morva is set to be put to death on Thursday using a cocktail of unregulated drugs
PHOTO: AP
The state of Virginia is preparing to execute a 32-year-old man using a controversial lethal injection formula that may have subjected the last prisoner to be executed in the same way experience an excruciating death equivalent to drowning, reported The Guardian.
William Morva, who will be executed on Thursday, showed signs of serious mental illness almost eight years before he was even sentenced to death for the brutal killing of a hospital security guard and county sheriff in 2006. The prisoner appealed for clemency to the Democratic governor of Virginia, who has declined to intervene.
Morva is set to be put on death using a cocktail combination of three medical drugs. Two of the chemicals have been obtained by compounding pharmacies -- private outlets that are not subject to the full regulatory regime followed by regular drug manufacturers. And so, the drugs can be of variable strength and quality.
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New evidence relating to Virginia’s previous execution of Ricky Gray in the same way suggests that the patchy consistency of the lethal drugs may have caused a terrifying outcome. It notes that “blood-tinged fluid is present from the mouth” and that “the upper airways contain foamy liquid”. It also finds that the body’s lungs were “severely congested” and that there were “red cells present in the airways”.
Mark Edgar, an associate professor of pathology at Emory University school of medicine has examined the autopsy report and said that its finding of a frothy liquid in the upper airways was very unusual. It was an indication, he said, of acute pulmonary edema, in which fluid collects in the lungs and overwhelms an individual’s ability to breathe.
The governor, who nominally opposed the death penalty, allowed the execution of Gray to proceed. He was also the architect of a legislation that imposed some of the most stringent secrecy laws of any death penalty state. Under these laws, it is not possible to find the identity of the compounding pharmacies that produced two of the three drugs in the state’s lethal injection cocktail.
Maya Foa, director at the international rights charity Reprieve, accused Virginia’s department of corrections of “dealing drugs on the black market, under cover of a secrecy law that shields back-alley compounding labs from regulation”. She said that the drugs in the state’s possession had already “led to one prolonged and potentially torturous execution” and were now set to be injected into Morva within hours.
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“Rather than relying on chance to decide whether William Morva dies in agony, Governor McAuliffe should intervene and stop this execution,” she said. The attorney for condemned prisoner, Dawn Davison, said that instead of focusing on killing Morva the state should give him treatment for severe mental illness. “Nothing can be gained by pushing ahead, except subjecting a vulnerable man to a potentially slow and excruciating death.”
This article originally appeared on The Guardian.
William Morva, who will be executed on Thursday, showed signs of serious mental illness almost eight years before he was even sentenced to death for the brutal killing of a hospital security guard and county sheriff in 2006. The prisoner appealed for clemency to the Democratic governor of Virginia, who has declined to intervene.
Morva is set to be put on death using a cocktail combination of three medical drugs. Two of the chemicals have been obtained by compounding pharmacies -- private outlets that are not subject to the full regulatory regime followed by regular drug manufacturers. And so, the drugs can be of variable strength and quality.
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New evidence relating to Virginia’s previous execution of Ricky Gray in the same way suggests that the patchy consistency of the lethal drugs may have caused a terrifying outcome. It notes that “blood-tinged fluid is present from the mouth” and that “the upper airways contain foamy liquid”. It also finds that the body’s lungs were “severely congested” and that there were “red cells present in the airways”.
Mark Edgar, an associate professor of pathology at Emory University school of medicine has examined the autopsy report and said that its finding of a frothy liquid in the upper airways was very unusual. It was an indication, he said, of acute pulmonary edema, in which fluid collects in the lungs and overwhelms an individual’s ability to breathe.
The governor, who nominally opposed the death penalty, allowed the execution of Gray to proceed. He was also the architect of a legislation that imposed some of the most stringent secrecy laws of any death penalty state. Under these laws, it is not possible to find the identity of the compounding pharmacies that produced two of the three drugs in the state’s lethal injection cocktail.
Maya Foa, director at the international rights charity Reprieve, accused Virginia’s department of corrections of “dealing drugs on the black market, under cover of a secrecy law that shields back-alley compounding labs from regulation”. She said that the drugs in the state’s possession had already “led to one prolonged and potentially torturous execution” and were now set to be injected into Morva within hours.
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“Rather than relying on chance to decide whether William Morva dies in agony, Governor McAuliffe should intervene and stop this execution,” she said. The attorney for condemned prisoner, Dawn Davison, said that instead of focusing on killing Morva the state should give him treatment for severe mental illness. “Nothing can be gained by pushing ahead, except subjecting a vulnerable man to a potentially slow and excruciating death.”
This article originally appeared on The Guardian.