A drug trafficker was hanged in Iran on or about October 10. After hanging for 12 minutes, a doctor pronounced him dead and he was taken to a morgue. The following day morgue attendants discovered he was breathing. He was taken to a hospital where he is now recovering. Iranian authorities intend to hang him again once he is well enough to be executed.
Amnesty International is raising ten kinds of holy hell because Iran wants to hang the man again. In calling on Iran not to execute him again, it made the absurd claim that the death penalty to combat drug trafficking is in violation of international law. That claim is either a deliberate lie or a figment of Amnesty International’s imagination.
Coincidentally, October 10 happened to be World Day Against the Death Penalty.
On Tuesday, William Happ was executed at Florida State Prison in Starke for the rape and murder of a woman in 1986. He became the first death row inmate to be executed with the drug midazolam hydrochloride, a strong sedative.
Midazolam was used in place of pentobarbital in Florida's three-drug execution cocktail. Pentobarbital producers are refusing to furnish the drug for use in executions.
The execution began at 6:02 p.m. Happ’s eyes opened and he blinked several times. He closed his eyes and opened them again two minutes later. He then yawned and his jaw dropped open. At 6:08 p.m., the official in charge tugged at Happ’s eyelids and grasped his shoulder to check for a response. There was no response and he was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.
Death penalty abolitionists raised concerns that midazolam might not work as claimed, thus subjecting a condemned inmate to cruel and unusual punishment. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, complained that "This is somewhat of an experiment on a living human being."
Etheria Jackson, another death row inmate, has a hearing set for November 6 in Jacksonville’s U.S. District Court. His lawyers want the execution stopped contending that there is a ‘substantial risk’ of midazolam not working completely, thus violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment by subjecting Jackson to a painful paralysis and fatal hear seizure over several minutes.
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