So now they want to try a new drug, and the challenges begin before there is even an execution scheduled.

Lawyers say Arkansas to use untried execution drug
APNewsBreak: Lawyers say Arkansas plans to use untried drug to execute death row inmates

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Arkansas plans to put prisoners to death with a drug that apparently hasn't been used in a U.S. execution, and lawyers for condemned inmates warn that it could take longer for someone to die from it than from other lethal injection drugs.

Arkansas Department of Correction spokeswoman Shea Wilson told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the state plans to use phenobarbital, along with lorazepam, in lethal injections. None are currently scheduled, but Arkansas recently passed a law that will allow the state to resume executions.

Both phenobarbital and lorazepam are used to relieve anxiety. Phenobarbital, which is a barbiturate or a kind of depressant drug, is also used to control seizures.

In a letter obtained by the AP, federal public defender Jenniffer Horan told Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe that phenobarbital takes effect more slowly than other drugs used to execute prisoners and that it carries a "substantial risk of a lingering and inhumane death."

"No state has ever used Phenobarbital in a lethal injection procedure, and for good reason," wrote Horan, whose office represents a number of Arkansas death row inmates. "Throughout the history of lethal injection, states have preferred ultra-short-acting barbiturates that cause rapid unconsciousness and death. Phenobarbital, however, has a long onset of action."

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, also said states have never used phenobarbital in executions.

Arkansas is not alone in seeking different drugs to be used in lethal injections. A manufacturer of propofol, the anesthetic blamed for Michael Jackson's death, said last year that it wouldn't sell the drug for use in U.S. executions, causing a setback for Missouri and other states looking for an alternative after other drug makers also objected to their products' use in lethal injections.

"There is some uncertainty out there even in obtaining some of those drugs so I think states are ... looking into alternatives that might be more readily compounded or available," Dieter said.

Arkansas's last execution was in 2005. The state is seeking to resume executions after legislators this year rewrote a lethal injection law that the state Supreme Court struck down in 2012.

The court ruled that Arkansas legislators had given the Department of Correction too much control over execution procedures. The new law says the state must use a lethal dose of a barbiturate, but it leaves it up to the Department of Correction to determine which drug.

Until Tuesday, corrections officials hadn't said publicly which drug or drugs they plan to use.

A copy of the state's lethal injection procedure, also obtained by the AP on Tuesday, lists phenobarbital and lorazepam as the chemicals to be used.

Wilson, the correction spokeswoman, said phenobarbital was one of the drugs "that the federal public defender listed in a previous lawsuit as an FDA-approved barbiturate."

Horan's office declined to comment beyond the letter to the governor, but in the letter, Horan said phenobarbital has not been approved by the FDA.

No one at the FDA immediately responded to an after-hours phone message seeking comment.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said he hadn't seen Horan's letter, which asks the governor to review the Department of Correction's decision to use phenobarbital.

Fiction, about a Hangman in the wild west.  So far so good, but again it is Fiction.

Gone, no great loss to humanity

Next!

So I finished this today.  It is a quick read, there are a few times where the information made me wonder if he was pro or anti, he does try to remain neutral.

The book centers on interviews with the people who ran the Gas Chamber, or were the Wardens at a few prisons.  The stories are good, but only skim the surface.  He goes into detail about how the experience changed the people he interviewed over time, not as you may think.

Some of the best "moments" come in the footnotes at the end of the book.

Is it worth reading, yes, but not worth buying.

SO I read a little more yesterday, and...

I didn't buy this book, checked it out of my local library.  Reviews, good/bad mean nothing to me.  I read about subjects that interest me, and form my own opinion.  The DP is a issue I have always stood up for.  Most of the interviews center around the "death belt" Florida to Texas.

Now here is an interesting quote on Jimmy Lee Gray, 10/2/83 Supreme Court decision 5-3 not to hear a cruel and unusual punishment plea : This case illustrates a recent pattern of calculated efforts to frustrate valid judgements after painstaking judicial review over a number of years.  At some point," Chief Justice Warren Burger concluded, " there must be finality."

Jimmy was executed in the gas chamber

I am about 100 pages in so far, it is a good read, and is not biased one way or the other.  Just the facts.  Have come across a few interesting things I will add soon

This stay makes me mad. 

He was OK to be in the military
he killed not 1x but 2x

its the systems fault.  Issues like this should need to be raised long before the date comes around, not as he is eating his last meal.

I hope this is rescheduled soon, and he can join his accomplice.

Race card, I hate this.  Set another date and lets get this over with.

Good for Ohio,

Say Bye

I am torn over this, as I live in CT.  But feel we can save a buttload of $$ if we grant his wish.

Connecticut home invasion murderer volunteers for execution
By Mary Ellen Godin | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

NAUGATUCK, Connecticut (Reuters) - One of two men sentenced to die for the Connecticut home invasion killings of a mother and her daughters wants to abandon his appeals and seek execution, the Hartford Courant reported on Thursday.

In a one-page handwritten letter received by the newspaper, Steven Hayes said he wants to be put to death for killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit, who he raped and strangled, and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, who died of smoke inhalation after the family home was set on fire.

Hayes, 49, and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 32, were convicted and sentenced to death for the three murders and for beating Hawke-Petit's husband, Dr. William Petit Jr., the only survivor of the 2007 crime.

Both Hayes and Komisarjevsky had appealed.

"I declared to my defense team and the DOC (Department of Corrections) that I was going to petition to waive my direct appeal and go to the death chamber," Hayes wrote in the September 29 letter, which was excerpted in the newspaper on Thursday.

"I cannot live with the intense tourcher (sic), torment, harassment, and the resulting psychological trauma dished out by the Dept. Of Corr. staff here at Northern," he wrote, referring to Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut.

"I was sentenced to death, not sentenced to tourcher (sic) and punitive treatment until death," the letter said.

Connecticut abolished capital punishment in April but legislators designed the law to apply only to future sentences so that Hayes and Komisarjevsky could be executed for the killings that sent shock waves across the state.

Attempts to reach the New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington and the office of the Capital Defense Trial Services Unit, which is handling Hayes appeal, as well as New Haven public defender Thomas Ullman, Hayes' lawyer, were unsuccessful.

Say Bye Scum

I work hard a few days, missed this

Say Bye

the desperate last day appeals

tick toc

The day is upon us

tic toc

This has gone on too long.  Lets get it over with.