Execution: Pain claim rejected

2006-01-18 22:42

Miami - The Florida supreme court has rejected a claim that lethal injection causes undue pain, and denied a motion to postpone the scheduled execution of a convicted murderer.

Clarence Edward Hill had asked for his execution, scheduled for January 24, to be postponed so a court could hear arguments that the lethal injection procedure used in Florida amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the US constitution.

Hill, who was sentence to death for the shooting of a policeman during a bank robbery, based his argument on research published in The Lancet medical journal.

But the state high court rejected the argument, pointing out that even the authors of the study admitted it was inconclusive.

The study, conducted in other US states that use the procedure, suggested that the pain killer pentium pentothal, which is mixed in the injection, could wear off before the convict dies.

The study "does not assert that providing an inmate with 'no less than two grams' of sodium pentothal, as is Florida's procedure, is not sufficient to render the inmate unconscious", the court said in the decision posted on the court's website on Wednesday.

- AFP