Capital Defense Weekly

When executions go bad: the Delaware edition

An interesting story out of Delaware on that state’s lethal injection litigation. Attorneys challenging that state’s protocol are claiming that Delaware’s last execution was, in fact, botched.

Federal public defender Michael Wiseman argued that examining past practices can help determine whether Delaware is violating the constitutional rights of condemned inmates, even if the protocol itself is constitutional.

Wiseman argued that Delaware officials have repeatedly failed to follow the state’s execution protocols.. . . [more]

In court papers, Wiseman claims that Brian Steckel – who in 1994 strangled Sandra Lee Long of Wilmington into unconsciousness before raping and sodomizing her and setting a fire in which she burned to death – was executed in 2005 without proper anesthesia.

According to Wiseman, prison officials noticed that the anesthetic being administered to Steckel before he received doses of two lethal chemicals began leaking into tissue surrounding the needle in his arm, but DOC records indicate that Steckel did not receive a second dose of sodium thiopental through a backup intravenous line before the two lethal drugs were administered.

“Mr. Steckel was administered a paralytic drug and then an extremely painful heart-stopping drug without having received adequate anesthesia,” Wiseman wrote.

Steckel’s execution was so drawn out that the inmate himself wondered aloud why it was taking so long. Prison officials have said there were no technical difficulties, and that they simply wanted to give Steckel more time to say goodbye to loved ones.