Texas man appeals execution, cites Oklahoma death chamber botch

Attorneys for a condemned killer facing execution in Texas this week are demanding that his capital punishment be halted because he risks an ordeal like the one an Oklahoma inmate went through when his lethal injection was botched last month.

Robert Campbell would be the first person executed in the United States since Clayton Lockett writhed and gasped in the death chamber, then died of an apparent heart attack after Oklahoma prison officials aborted his execution following the failure of an intravenous line carrying the deadly drugs.

Campbell’s lawyers argued Monday in a plea to a federal appeals court that his “Eighth Amendment rights can only be protected if he is provided the information required to ensure a humane, nontorturous execution.” The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment.

In an interview with The New York Times, one of Campbell’s lawyers, Maurie Levin, said the Oklahoma case was instructive for her client. Although Lockett’s execution apparently was not botched due to the chemicals used, both Texas and Oklahoma have recently come under scrutiny over the drugs used in the process.

“Texas doesn’t have some kind of magic touch. There’s nothing that says we can’t trust Oklahoma, but we can trust Texas,” Levin said, noting that both states have refused to publicly reveal the composition of their death penalty chemical mixtures.

The risks are “exponentially greater when executions are carried out in secret,” she said.

Campbell's request for a stay was previously rejected by a federal judge, Keith P. Ellison, in an appeal last Friday — but that judge said his hands were tied by the decisions of other courts, and he urged a federal appeals court considering Monday's appeal to weigh the developments in Oklahoma.

In his decision, Ellison of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas said “the horrific narrative of Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014 requires sober reflection on the manner in which this nation administers the ultimate punishment.”

While Ellison said he was not in a position to issue an injunction on the execution, he urged the Fifth Court of Appeals to “reconsider its jurisprudence that seems to shield crucial elements of the execution process from open inquiry.”

Like several other states, Texas has refused to identify the source of its execution drug, citing possible threats of violence to the supplier if it is disclosed. Texas uses a single drug, pentobarbital, while Oklahoma used a three-drug combination.

Questions about execution procedures have drawn renewed attention from defense attorneys and death penalty opponents in recent months as states have been forced to scramble to find new sources of execution drugs. Several drug makers, including many based in Europe, have refused to sell drugs for use in executions.

The issue surfaced in Texas — the U.S. state that has most frequently used the death penalty — when it replenished its execution drug stock in late March. But the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals that focused on secrecy surrounding the drug supplier's name, and three Texas inmates have been executed since then.

The secrecy surrounding the chemicals has escalated the national debate on capital punishment in recent months, but it appeared to be other parts of the procedure that led to problems in Lockett’s case.

Oklahoma officials tried for 51 minutes to find a vein, for the needle administering the execution drugs, in Lockett's arms and feet. They eventually inserted the IV into one in his groin. That vein collapsed, and because the dislodged line was under a sheet the problem was not detected until 21 minutes after the execution began, according to a report from the state's prison chief.

Another vein was not usable, and the state did not have another dose of lethal drugs nearby, so the execution was stopped — but Lockett died about 10 minutes later. The autopsy report will take two to three months to complete.

Campbell is set to be executed for the 1991 slaying of a Houston woman, Alexandra Rendon, who was abducted while putting gas into her car and then robbed, raped and shot. Campbell was 18 at the time and on parole after serving four months of a five-year sentence for robbery.

His lawyers also have other appeals in the courts, arguing that his execution should be halted because he is mentally impaired and that legal help he received at his trial and in earlier stages of appeals was deficient.

If executed on Tuesday, Campbell would become the 21st person to be killed by capital punishment in the U.S. in 2014.

Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. With additional reporting by Tom Kutsch.