bonus…needed to breathe
Now…
The sister of a death row inmate who was subjected to the longest lethal injection process in US history has called for an investigation into his execution.
Joe Nathan James Jr., 50, from Birmingham, Alabama, was executed on July 28 for the 1994 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Faith Hall, in a procedure that took over three hours.
The execution was scheduled to take place at 6pm, but the curtains did not open to media observers until 9pm, where they witnessed James unresponsive on the gurney. He was declared dead at 9:27pm.
Yvette Craig, James’ younger sister, called her brother’s execution a ‘murder’ that took place against the wishes of Hall’s family, who had pleaded with Attorney General Steve Marshall and Governor Kay Ivey to stay his execution.
In a written statement to the Montgomery Advertiser, James’ sister, Yvette Craig demanded an investigation into the botched execution and implied that Alabama officials were trying to make an example of her brother during an election year.
No explanation for the three hour delay in the execution was initially given by Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm, but it was later said to be because prison officials struggled to place an IV on him.
Only the ADOC employees know what occurred during those three hours’ in which the execution was delayed, she wrote.
Craig said that ADOC Commissioner John Hamm should have let the execution warrant expire after the delay and reconsider the method of execution ‘at the very least’.
‘I would like to start by saying that there is no excuse for what my brother did,’ Craig wrote. ‘He took the life of a mother, and he deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison to think about what he did and why it was the wrong decision to make.’
The media’s observations of James’ condition when the curtain was opened ‘warrants an investigation of Commissioner John Hamm, Governor Kay Ivey, and Attorney General Steve Marshall’s actions leading up to the execution of my brother,’ she said.
Evaluation of the autopsy reveals that officials unsuccessfully tried for more than three hours to insert an IV line. The execution team then attempted a cut-down procedure, according to non-profit Reprieve US, which would have caused James to struggle and leave him with injuries on his hands and wrists.
The cut in his arm, likely to find a vein for the lethal injection protocol to be delivered through, would have been ‘extremely painful’.
‘Slicing deep into the skin with a sharp surgical blade in an awake person without local anesthesia would be extremely painful,’ Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University told The Atlantic. Zivot helped conduct the private autopsy and is an opponent of lethal-injection.
In a medical setting, ultrasound has virtually eliminated the need for a cutdown, and the fact that a cutdown was utilized here is further evidence that the IV team was unqualified for the task in a most dramatic way.’
James’ eyes were closed for the entirety of the procedure and he did not respond to the warden when asked if he had any last words, according to a report by AL.com.
Witnesses saw his arm move with some slight movement at 9:05 pm followed by some indications of breathing one minute later.
His breathing lasted until 9:10 pm when a correctional officer performed a consciousness check, to which James only responded to an arm pinch by moving his head side-to-side.
James’ breathing appeared to stop at 9:12 pm, with curtains to the room being closed to witnesses at 9:18 pm.
His time of death was recorded nine minutes later at 9:27 pm.
ADOC officials later said James was not sedated but that they could not say whether he was ‘fully conscious’ before the lethal drugs began to flow.
James’ eyes were not open at the beginning of the execution, and he appeared motionless, save for his breathing,’ Lee Hedgepeth, a media witness from Birmingham television station CBS42 wrote.
‘Today is a tragic day for our family,’ Hall’s family, who had petitioned against the execution of her killer, told WIAT in a statement at the time.
‘We hoped the state wouldn’t take a life simply because a life was taken and we have forgiven Mr Joe Nathan James Jr … We pray that God allows us to find healing after today and that one day our criminal justice system will listen to the cries of families like ours even if it goes against what the state wishes.’
Ukuthula/UBUNTU
mon aug 29 2022 REmbr… G is, as G can only BE. GOOD
amen. so BE it. laff THRU it…yes. in Time.
ponder on this 