Tag Archives: missouri

What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

by VicenteSommers Posted on February 27, 2015

Mother Jones

On Thursday morning, Thomas Schweich, Missouri’s auditor and a Republican candidate for governor, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death—coming moments after he had invited two reporters to his home later that day—shocked Missouri political observers, who point out that in addition to his beloved family and distinguished career in public service, Schweich, 54, had just won re-election to a second term as state auditor and was leading in early polls of the 2016 governor’s race. Why he would have taken his own life is a mystery to those who knew him. Just as strange is the predominant theory of what may have provoked his apparent suicide: rumors that he was Jewish.

In the days before his death, Schweich had been worried that the head of the Missouri Republican Party was conducting a “whisper campaign” against him by telling people that he was Jewish. Schweich was, in fact, an Episcopalian, but his grandfather was Jewish.

The police were called to Schweich’s home in Clayton, Missouri at 9:48 a.m. on Thursday. Just seven minutes earlier, Schweich had left a voicemail for Tony Messenger, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, inviting him to send a reporter to his home that afternoon. That morning, Schweich had also invited an AP reporter to attend this interview.

According to Messenger, Schweich had hoped to counter rumors that he was Jewish, which he believed were being spread by Missouri GOP chairman John Hancock in a bid to damage his candidacy. He feared misconceptions about his faith might hurt him with evangelical voters, according to a report by the New York Times. Schweich had been “agitated” discussing rumors about his faith earlier in the week, according to the AP reporter who had spoken to him minutes before his death.

Hancock responded on Friday to allegations that he was spreading misinformation about Schweich’s faith: “It’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.”

But would rumors about Schweich’s religion really have hurt him politically? A Jewish background doesn’t appear to be impeding another prospective GOP gubernatorial candidate. Eric Greitens, a Jewish former Navy Seal, launched an exploratory committee for a statewide campaign in Missouri this week. The Washington Free Beacon described him as “the great Jewish hope” in a recent profile about his entry into politics. Reports note that he might enter into the gubernatorial race, though he yet to announce which office he has his eye on.

On Friday, Messenger, who had a close source relationship with Schweich, revealed that in the days leading up to Schweich’s apparent suicide, the Republican candidate had discussed a desire to go public with accusations against Hancock. He had told Messenger that “his grandfather taught him to never allow any anti­-Semitism go unpunished, no matter how slight.” Messenger noted that anti-Semitisim is a factor in Missouri, the state that “gave us Frazier Glenn Miller, the raging racist who killed three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas City.” And he wrote, “Division over race and creed is real in Missouri Republican politics, particularly in some rural areas. Schweich knew it. It’s why all week long his anger burned.”

Kevin Murphy, the Clayton police chief, told reporters that there is no evidence that Schweich was under political attack or suffering from mental illness. Murphy also said it did not appear that Schweich’s death was accidental. He noted that the ongoing investigation would include interviews with Schweich’s friends and family, which has yet make a statement to the media about Schweich’s death.

The Missouri legislature gathered on Friday to mourn Schweich, who, before becoming Missouri state auditor in 2010, had served as chief of staff to three different US Ambassadors to the United Nations, as well as working on anti-drug trafficking initiatives in Afghanistan under during the George W. Bush administration.

There remain more questions than answers about Schweizer’s apparent suicide. “I have no idea why Schweich killed himself,” Messenger wrote in the Post-Dispatch on Friday. The only thing that seems clear is that there’s much more to the story behind his death.

View the original here – 

What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

Family Stages Elaborate, Insane Kidnapping to Teach "Nice" 6-Year Old Not to Talk to Strangers

by EduardoQ85 Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A 6-year-old boy’s mother, grandmother, and aunt have all been arrested after they orchestrated an elaborate kidnapping scheme, one that lasted for four hours and involved a very real handgun, to teach the boy a lesson about why it’s dangerous to talk to strangers.

Lincoln County police say the fake abduction was put into action on Monday after the Missouri family became gravely concerned that the boy was just “too nice” for his own good. The family also convinced a 23-year-old male friend of the aunt’s, Nathan Firoved, to get in on the action as their lead kidnapper. From NBC:

On Monday, Firoved allegedly kidnapped the child after he got off a school bus and said he would never “see his mommy again,” authorities said. Firoved also showed a handgun to the now-sobbing boy, then drove around in his truck, and finally tied him up and covered his face with a jacket when the child wouldn’t stop crying.

Firoved proceeded to blindfold the boy and place his feet into plastic bags, before driving back to the boy’s home. There, the aunt allegedly pulled down the boy’s pants and threatened to put him into “sex slavery.” Moments later, surprise! The boy became privy to the fact the whole terrifying ordeal was just a crafty hoax and that his own family was in fact far more dangerous than a true kidnapper.

The family has been charged with a host of charges, including felony kidnapping and abuse. They deny any wrongdoing.

Link:  

Family Stages Elaborate, Insane Kidnapping to Teach "Nice" 6-Year Old Not to Talk to Strangers

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Family Stages Elaborate, Insane Kidnapping to Teach "Nice" 6-Year Old Not to Talk to Strangers

Here Are the Places Ferguson Protesters Have Shut Down

by WDCIsmaeltjydj Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Since a grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson early last week, thousands have taken to the streets around the country to protest, with some using tactics aimed to disrupt: They’ve marched onto freeways in traffic, chained themselves across commuter train cars, and staged “die-ins” in malls on the busiest shopping day of the year.

In downtown Dallas, Interstate 35 was shut down in both directions for two hours last Tuesday night, after protesters carrying signs that said “Black Lives Matter” climbed in front of traffic. In the St. Louis region, three malls experienced significant disruptions on Black Friday, with one closing three hours early. And in Oakland, a handful of young activists chained themselves in a line across the West Oakland BART station, intending to keep the station closed for four and a half hours, the amount of time Michael Brown’s body laid in the street.

A protester refuses to move in front of the police on Interstate 44 in downtown St. Louis on Tuesday, November 25. Protesters occupied the flyover lanes in both directions for about a half hour until police made several arrests, including this man, and forced the protesters to leave. J.B. Forbes/AP/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Protesters block all lanes of Interstate 75/85 northbound near the state capitol building in Atlanta one day after the grand jury decision. David Tulis/AP

Protesters stage a “die in” inside Chesterfield Mall, on Friday, November 28, in Chesterfield, Missouri. Jeff Roberson/AP

Protesters block Interstate 580 in Oakland, California, on Monday, November 24. Noah Berger/AP

A demonstrator is arrested on Tuesday, November 25, after a large group of protesters attempted to march onto Interstate 93 in Boston. Christopher Evans/AP/Boston Herald

Continue reading: 

Here Are the Places Ferguson Protesters Have Shut Down

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here Are the Places Ferguson Protesters Have Shut Down

News Organizations Battle Pennsylvania Over Secret Source of Its Execution Drugs

by CamilleDickens Posted on September 11, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and four news organizations filed an emergency legal motion on Thursday, demanding that Pennsylvania reveal the source of its execution drugs.

Later this month, the state is scheduled to put 57-year-old Hubert Michael to death for the 1993 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl. While the execution has been stayed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the ACLU fears the hold could be lifted at any time, opening the way for the first execution in Pennsylvania in more than 15 years.

Since 2011, when the European Union banned the export of drugs for use in executions, Pennsylvania and other death penalty states have been forced to rely on untested drug combinations and loosely regulated compounding pharmacies. And most have become secretive about the sources and contents of their execution drugs. Death row inmates around the country have sued to block their executions on the ground that withholding this information is unconstitutional, as untested or poorly prepared drug cocktails could create a level of suffering that violates the Eight Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. So far, they’ve met with little success. Clayton Lockett, who lost his bid to force the state of Oklahoma to reveal the source and purity of the drugs used to put him to death, writhed and moaned in apparent agony after being injected with a secretly acquired drug combinations in April.

Continue Reading »

View this article – 

News Organizations Battle Pennsylvania Over Secret Source of Its Execution Drugs

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on News Organizations Battle Pennsylvania Over Secret Source of Its Execution Drugs

Pentagon and Other Agencies Slammed for Police Militarization at Senate Hearing

by CharlinFreycine Posted on September 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers slammed officials from the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice for their handling of federal programs that help provide military grade vehicles, equipment, and weapons to local police departments across the country. The hearing was called in response to the events that took place in Ferguson, Missouri, after an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white police officer, and peaceful protests were met by a heavily militarized police force. “Aggressive police actions were being used under the umbrella of ‘crowd control,'” noted Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

The panel grilled Alan Estevez, a Department of Defense agent dealing with logistics and acquisition of military equipment; Brian Kamoie, a federal grant regulator at the Department of Homeland Security; and Karol Mason, an attorney from the Department of Justice.

Senators questioned why certain military equipment was on the Pentagon’s list of acceptable items for local police departments. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) declared that police militarization gives him “real heartburn” and wondered “how did we get to the point where we think states needs MRAPS”—that is, mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, which have been acquired by a large number of small police departments across the country. In Texas, McCaskill noted, police departments have more than 70 MRAPS, while the state National Guard has just six.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questioned what police departments could possibly do with the 1,200 bayonets that have been issued in recent years. The Pentagon’s Alan Estevez replied that he was unsure. Throughout the hearing, members of the panel underscored the point that police officers are often not adequately trained in how (and when) to use the military-grade equipment their departments acquire. The Pentagon doesn’t require police departments to undergo any training before supplying them MRAPS and other military equipment.

Estevez testified that the Pentagon would reevaluate its list of acceptable equipment for police departments. But Brian Kamoie, the Homeland Security official, and the Justice Department’s Karol Mason, both acknowledged that their agencies don’t do much to regulate how police departments use the grant money they dole out to local law enforcement.

McCaskill condemned the Department of Defense and the other agencies for their lack of oversight over the use of military equipment by local police. “None of them know how it’s being utilized,” McCaskill said. She pointed out that a police department in Lake Angelus, Michigan, which employs only one police officer, has received 13 military grade assault weapons since 2011. “I think we need to get to the bottom of that,” McCaskill said.

Watch the hearing here:

Link: 

Pentagon and Other Agencies Slammed for Police Militarization at Senate Hearing

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pentagon and Other Agencies Slammed for Police Militarization at Senate Hearing

Voter Registration Drives in Ferguson Are "Disgusting," Says Missouri GOP Leader

by RosellaHahn Posted on August 20, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Over the last couple days, voter registration booths have been popping up in Ferguson. There was one by the ruined site of the recently burned-down QuikTrip convenience store, which has become a central gathering site of the protests, and another near the site where Michael Brown was shot.

Voter turnout was just 12 percent in Ferguson’s last municipal election, and in a city that’s 60 percent black, virtually all city officials are white. In December, the black superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant school district was fired by the then all-white school board, and the longtime St. Louis county executive, who is black, recently lost his seat to a white opponent in a race seen as “racially charged.” “Five thousand new voters will transform the city from top to bottom,” said Jesse Jackson Sr., who told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday that he was meeting with local clergy to organize a door-to-door voter registration drive.

But the prospect of more registered black voters has greatly perturbed the executive director of Missouri’s Republican Party, Matt Wills, who expressed outrage at the new registration booths to Breitbart News Monday:

“If that’s not fanning the political flames, I don’t know what is,” Wills said. “I think it’s not only disgusting but completely inappropriate…Injecting race into this conversation and into this tragedy, not only is not helpful, but it doesn’t help a continued conversation of justice and peace.”

While some on Twitter echoed Wills’ sentiments and painted the voter efforts as Democratic opportunism, other political leaders in Missouri distanced themselves from Wills’ comments. Republican state Sen. Ryan Silvey of Kansas City tweeted, “I have no problem w/ protesters, or anyone, getting registered to vote. How do we keep our gov’t accountable if not by ballot?” And he had more to say later:

In April, an editorial in the Kansas City Star denounced “cheap” tactics by the Missouri GOP to “make voting more difficult for certain citizens, who are most likely to be elderly, low-income, students or minorities. They’re not even subtle about it.” A proposed amendment to the state constitution would require photo ID at the polls, and a proposal to bring early voting to Missouri would disallow it on Sundays—a big day for black voters. The Star pointed out that the photo ID law would cost the state over $6 million next year, “a huge cost, especially because Republicans have been able to produce zero examples of voter identity fraud in Missouri.” In fact, as my colleague Kevin Drum has exhaustively reported, incidents of voter fraud anywhere in the country are microscopically few; the New York Times found just 86 cases from 2002 to 2006, for instance.

“Elected officials don’t have to care about black citizens as long as they don’t fear them at the ballot box,” Dorothy A. Brown, a professor of law at Emory University’s School of Law who’s written a book on race and the law, noted on CNN.com last week. If anything, the Missouri GOP may be on track to increase the number of voters determined to put that notion into practice.

Link:  

Voter Registration Drives in Ferguson Are "Disgusting," Says Missouri GOP Leader

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Voter Registration Drives in Ferguson Are "Disgusting," Says Missouri GOP Leader

What Do We Know So Far From Mike Brown’s Autopsies?

by DamienVxmvkqoot Posted on August 18, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Normally, it takes weeks to get the results of an autopsy. But today, St. Louis County medical examiner Mary Case announced that Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was killed by a policeman last weekend in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot in the head and chest multiple times. Here’s the information we know about Michael Brown’s death, and a little background on why autopsies usually take so much longer.

What have the autopsies found so far?

Three separate autopsies are in various stages of completion. The St. Louis County medical examiner’s office announced on Monday that Brown was killed by multiple bullets to the chest and head. The office has not yet released information about the number or location of the bullets or their toxicology report. According to a confidential source reporting to the Washington Post, Brown’s toxicology test found that he tested positive for marijuana.

The preliminary results of an independent autopsy arranged by the Brown family and performed on Sunday by former New York City medical examiner Michael Baden found that Brown was shot six times: four times in his right arm, and twice in the head. One of the bullets entered the top of Brown’s skull, indicating that his head was tilted forward when the bullet struck him and caused a fatal injury. According to Benjamin Crump, the attorney representing the Browns, the family wanted “an autopsy done by somebody who is objective and who does not have a relationship with the Ferguson police.”

Attorney General announced on Sunday that the Justice Department would conduct a third autopsy, because of “the extraordinary circumstances involved in this case and at the request of the Brown family.” A department representative said the autopsy would take place “as soon as possible.”

Why does it usually take so long to get autopsy results?

An autopsy itself usually doesn’t take too long, but often, medical examiners will wait to release the results until toxicology tests, which analyze the presence of drugs, are also complete. Toxicology tests usually take several weeks, in part due to the chemistry involved and in part because there’s often a backlog of tests. Coupling the release of the toxicology and autopsy results is standard practice because it gives a more complete picture of what may have happened during the shooting, says Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist and the author of Working Stiff: The Making of a Medical Examiner. Determining whether or not a person was under the influence of drugs “may help interpret a person’s behavior and reaction time,” she says.

What do toxicology tests entail?

A basic screening often involves using immunoassays to test blood and urine (from inside the body) for drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, and opiates. If a test comes back positive, then a lab will run more complex tests, like mass spectrometry, to determine the exact concentration of the drug. Melinek says that “negative results come back faster,” and “the more drugs found in a person’s system, the longer it takes because each has to be verified and quantitated.” If Brown only tested positive for marijuana, the tests would only take a few days.

Was Brown’s case slowed down by an autopsy backlog?

Autopsy backlogs do exist—last year in Massachusetts, for example, there were nearly 1,000 unfinished death certificates due to lack of qualified pathologists and state funding for toxicology testing. According to Suzanne Picayune, a representative of the St. Louis County medical examiner’s office, Brown’s case was expedited through the system, as often happens for cases involving officers.

Visit site – 

What Do We Know So Far From Mike Brown’s Autopsies?

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Do We Know So Far From Mike Brown’s Autopsies?

Watch President Obama Deliver Remarks About the Violence In Ferguson, Missouri

by GeorgiannaChewi Posted on August 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

President Obama just delivered remarks on the deteriorating situation in Ferguson, Missouri, where Wednesday night St. Louis law enforcement officials fired tear gas on peaceful demonstrators protesting the killing of Michael Brown.

Here are his remarks, transcript courtesy of the Washington Post:

I want to address something that’s been in the news over the last couple of days, and that’s the last situation in Ferguson, Missouri. I know that many Americans have been deeply disturbed by the images we’ve seen in the heartland of our country as police have clashed with people protesting, today I’d like us all to take a step back and think about how we’re going to be moving forward.

This morning, I received a thorough update on the situation from Attorney General Eric Holder, who’s been following and been in communication with his team. I’ve already tasked the Department of Justice and the FBI to independently investigate the death of Michael Brown, along with local officials on the ground. The Department of Justice is also consulting with local authorities about ways that they can maintain public safety without restricting the right of peaceful protest and while avoiding unnecessary escalation. I made clear to the attorney general that we should do what is necessary to help determine exactly what happened and to see that justice is done.

I also just spoke with Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri. I expressed my concern over the violent turn that events have taken on the ground, and underscored that now’s the time for all of us to reflect on what’s happened and to find a way to come together going forward. He is going to be traveling to Ferguson. He is a good man and a fine governor, and I’m confident that working together, he’s going to be able to communicate his desire to make sure that justice is done and his desire to make sure that public safety is maintained in an appropriate way.

Of course, it’s important to remember how this started. We lost a young man, Michael Brown, in heartbreaking and tragic circumstances. He was 18 years old, and his family will never hold Michael in their arms again. And when something like this happens, the local authorities, including the police, have a responsibility to be open and transparent about how they are investigating that death and how they are protecting the people in their communities. There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. There’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights. And here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs and report to the American people on what they see on the ground.

Put simply, we all need to hold ourselves to a high standard, particularly those of us in positions of authority. I know that emotions are raw right now in Ferguson and there are certainly passionate differences about what has happened. There are going to be different accounts of how this tragedy occurred. There are going to be differences in terms of what needs to happen going forward. That’s part of our democracy. But let’s remember that we’re all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order and the right to peaceful public protest, a reverence for the dignity of every single man, woman and child among us, and the need for accountability when it comes to our government.

So now is the time for healing. Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson. Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done. And I’ve asked that the attorney general and the U.S. attorney on the scene continue to work with local officials to move that process forward. They will be reporting to me in the coming days about what’s being done to make sure that happens.

From:  

Watch President Obama Deliver Remarks About the Violence In Ferguson, Missouri

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch President Obama Deliver Remarks About the Violence In Ferguson, Missouri

Autopsy Shows Just How Royally Oklahoma Screwed Up Clayton Lockett’s Execution

by TerryQnhtwe Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In April, when Oklahoma tried to execute Clayton Lockett, everything went wrong. The execution team spent more than an hour trying to find a useable vein. And after officials administered drugs that should have rendered him unconscious, he raised his head, writhed on the gurney and mumbled, appearing to be in pain. The proceeding was eventually halted, but Lockett reportedly died of a heart attack a few minutes later. Corrections officials insisted at the time that Lockett’s vein had “blown” or ruptured, causing the drugs to leak into surrounding tissue rather than into his blood stream. Now preliminary findings from an independent autopsy of Lockett suggest an unsettling explanation of what really happened: The people charged with carrying out the execution had absolutely no clue what they were doing.

Oklahoma officials initially claimed that Lockett’s executioners had been forced to insert an IV line into the inmate’s femoral vein—a painful place for the insertion and also a risky one that requires serious medical expertise—after running into difficulty finding another suitable vein. They also suggested that dehydration or another medical condition might have led to Lockett’s botched execution.

Lockett’s lawyers retained a medical examiner, who performed an autopsy on the prisoner. Dr. Joseph Cohen’s findings, which were released today, raise serious questions about the official account. The autopsy indicates that Lockett’s vein never blew—because the IV was never inserted there in the first place. Instead, the needle punctured the vein. Cohen also determined that there was nothing wrong with the veins in Lockett’s arms that would have justified using a femoral vein, nor was he dehydrated. Yet he found “skin punctures on the extremities and right and left femoral areas,” and proof that the execution team had tried to set lines in both of Lockett’s arms and both sides of his groin. Cohen also found more evidence of inept handiwork in hemorrhages around the places the team had tried to access a vein, as well as other injuries related to “failed vascular catheter access.”

As with other botched lethal injection executions, the autopsy provides compelling evidence that the people handling what is supposed to be a medical procedure, albeit a gruesome one, have little or no medical training. Oklahoma corrections officials, as well as the governor, said athat a phlebotomist had inserted Lockett’s IV. Phlebotomists are fairly low-level health care workers whose primary training and work involves drawing blood for testing. Leaving aside the fact that, in Oklahoma, phlebotomists aren’t licensed, regulated, or trained in inserting catheters or IVs, the state’s own protocols require a paramedic or EMT to inert an IV. After the Tulsa World started asking about this discrepancy, the state changed its position and claimed that the work had been done by an EMT. State law makes this almost impossible to verify, shrouding the identities of execution team members in secrecy.

Executioner jobs don’t necessarily attract the best and brightest. The oath doctors take to “first do no harm” renders them ethically prohibited from participating in executions, so often the people who carry out lethal injections are just ordinary prison officials or, in some cases, employees with checkered pasts. In Arizona, for instance, where execution team members are supposed to receive background checks, one of the primary execution team members had a criminal record, including arrests for drunk driving and drinking in public. Even when doctors participate, they’re not always at the top of their profession. In Missouri, dyslexic surgeon Dr. Alan Doerhoff, who admitted to improvising drug mixtures, oversaw 54 executions before a judge banned him from performing any more. Doerhoff was the subject of more than 20 malpractice lawsuits during his career, and he was disciplined by the state medical board for concealing lawsuits from a hospital where he worked. Two Missouri hospitals banned him from practicing in their facilities.

Cohen is still seeking more information from Oklahoma about its procedures, test results from the coroner’s office, and other details about the day Lockett died. Corrections officials tasered Lockett in the process of removing him from his cell to take him to the death chamber, and Cohen is seeking more information about that, too, due to other injuries he found on Lockett’s body.

In a statement, Dr. Mark Heath, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University and an expert in lethal injection executions who has been aiding defense lawyers challenging state protocols, explained, “Dr. Cohen has begun a critically important inquiry into the botched execution of Clayton Lockett. However, to complete this inquiry, Dr. Cohen will need the state to provide extensive additional information beyond what the body itself revealed. I hope that Oklahoma provides everything he asks for so that we can all understand what went so terribly wrong in Mr. Lockett’s execution.”

Visit source: 

Autopsy Shows Just How Royally Oklahoma Screwed Up Clayton Lockett’s Execution

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Autopsy Shows Just How Royally Oklahoma Screwed Up Clayton Lockett’s Execution

The People Giving Lethal Injections: Untrained, Incompetent, or Just "Complete Idiots"

by JurgenWampler Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last week’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma has heightened the debate over lethal injection. The United States has encountered a shortage of the drugs historically used in capital punishment as pharmaceutical companies have largely refused to make them, export them, or sell them to prisons for use in executions. Death row inmates have filed dozens of challenges to the lethal injection protocols that states have sought to keep secret. Meanwhile, states are trying ever more desperate measures to procure the old drugs or cook up new cocktails to try on inmates.

But as Lockett’s torturous execution showed, the drugs are only part of the problem. In his case, prison staff apparently failed to properly insert the IV into his femoral artery—a procedure that requires professional medical skills—and the drugs were injected into soft tissue rather than the bloodstream, leaving him writhing in pain and forcing officials to halt the execution. (He ended up dying of a heart attack, anyway.)

Historically, lethal injection has been plagued with problems just like those that occurred in Lockett’s case, and they are due in large part to the incompetence of the people charged with administering the deadly drugs. Physicians have mostly left the field of capital punishment; the American Medical Association and other professional groups consider it highly unethical for doctors to assist with executions. As a result, the people willing to do the dirty work aren’t always at the top of their fields, or even specifically trained in the jobs they’re supposed to do. As Dr. Jay Chapman, the Oklahoma coroner who essentially created the modern lethal injection protocol, observed in the New York Times in 2007, “It never occurred to me when we set this up that we’d have complete idiots administering the drugs.”

States typically have had few requirements for those serving on an execution team. At one point, in Florida, the only criteria was that a potential executioner be at least 18 years old. Wardens, prison guards, phlebotomists, paramedics, and nurses are sometimes in the mix. After botched executions, judges have occasionally ordered states to have a board-certified anesthesiologist involved—a requirement that tends to prompt a moratorium because few of those doctors will participate. The actual makeup of execution teams is often a state secret that officials work hard to conceal. Not surprisingly, although things often go wrong, individuals are rarely held accountable. One the rare occasions when details about execution teams are released, they only seem to confirm Chapman’s observation. Here are a few examples of what’s known about people who’ve been involved in administering lethal injections over the years.

By far the most notorious individual in the history of lethal injection, Dr. Alan Doerhoff was the dyslexic surgeon who oversaw 54 executions in Missouri, where he alone was in charge of deciding how to kill people. Doerhoff was the subject of more than 20 malpractice lawsuits during his career, and he was disciplined by the state medical board for concealing lawsuits from a hospital where he worked. Two Missouri hospitals banned him from practicing in their facilities.

The state worked for years to keep Doerhoff’s identity secret. But in a legal challenge by a Missouri death row inmate, he was forced to testify and eventually was unmasked. In his testimony he admitted that his disability made it hard for him to properly combine the death drugs, which he sometimes mixed up, and that, on his own, he’d started “improvising” and reducing the amount of anesthesia given to condemned prisoners by half. Unbelievably, the federal government actually used Doerhoff to create the protocols for federal executions and to oversee them. (He reportedly oversaw the execution of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.)

See page five of this report for a graphic illustration of Doerhoff’s handiwork on Missouri inmate Timothy Johnson—the botched IV insertion into the femoral artery is the same sort of problem that apparently occurred in the Lockett execution. Doerhoff had defended groin insertions as having “all benefit…There’s no way it can fail. And no risk to the inmate.”

A federal judge eventually banned Doerhoff from participating in executions in Missouri, which responded by making it a crime to reveal the identity of a current or former member of the state’s execution team. Doerhoff’s public exposure and track record apparently didn’t prevent Arizona from hiring him to oversee an execution there in 2007.

In 2006, testimony in another federal challenge to lethal injection revealed that the execution team leader at California’s San Quentin State Prison had been disciplined for smuggling illegal drugs into the facility before he was put on the team. Another team leader had been diagnosed with and was disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder, a problem hugely amplified by participating in executions.

After the botched 2005 execution of Stanley Tookie Williams in California—his vein collapsed after several unsuccessful attempts to insert an IV—the nurse responsible for the IV issues said that the execution team responded to the problems by saying “shit does happen.”

In Maryland, during a legal challenge to that state’s lethal-injection protocol, it was revealed that the person responsible for injecting drugs into the condemned man had been fired by a local police department after refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation. He had also been charged with poisoning and killing a bunch of neighborhood dogs. This apparently made him the perfect person to join the Maryland execution team, which also included someone who’d been suspended for spitting in inmates’ food before it was given to them.

Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says that in the wake of all the litigation over their lethal-injection protocols, states have attempted to at least provide better training for the people on their execution teams. But given how few people are really interested in becoming professional killers, especially the doctors needed to make sure the process goes smoothly, botched executions are likely to continue, regardless of what sorts of drugs the states come up with.

Link:  

The People Giving Lethal Injections: Untrained, Incompetent, or Just "Complete Idiots"

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The People Giving Lethal Injections: Untrained, Incompetent, or Just "Complete Idiots"