Killing Russell Bucklew: Missouri's Planned Departure from Decency

Update: 3/19/18: The state of Missouri plans to execute Russell Bucklew tomorrow, March 20. Bucklew’s unique medical condition means that the execution is likely to go horribly wrong. As a result of his rare and severe condition, cavernous hemangioma, he may hemorrhage, choke and suffocate in his own blood during the execution. If this happens, it won’t just be cruel and unconstitutional. It will be torturous. And Missouri wants to hide all this from the public.

Even by its own standards, the prison where this scene is set to take place is utterly unprepared for the execution scheduled just hours away. Prison officials admitted that they have no plan for how to respond if Mr. Bucklew appears to suffocate or choke. They failed to make any adjustments to their execution protocol to account for Mr. Bucklew’s medical condition.

This is malpractice of cruel and unusual proportions, and the state of Missouri wants no record of it. The state’s strategy so far has been to hide information about the executions from the public and from Mr. Bucklew himself, including information about the sources and producers of the drugs the state plans to kill him with.

A recent investigative report reveals that Missouri’s lethal injection program is hard to differentiate from any illegal drug deal: The state bought its drugs with cash payments and using code names for the drug seller. The drug seller is a compounding pharmacy, a company that produces small batches of made to order drugs, essentially legal knock-offs of other drugs. Worse, the drug seller has a dismal health and safety record. The stakes of error in the lethal injection drug are high: If erroneously made, the drug may cause Bucklew to feel as if he is being burned alive.

The time to intervene is now.

We filed a request for emergency action in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asking it to intervene because the execution would violate international law, which prohibits torture and cruel and inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Today the IACHR responded by asking the United States to halt the execution of Mr. Bucklew in Missouri and commute his death sentence. Missouri Governor Eric Greitens should commute Mr. Bucklew’s death sentence. Missouri cannot get away with knowingly following protocols that present a real risk that Mr. Bucklew will be tortured to death.

Something is scheduled to happen in Missouri at 12:01am on Wednesday morning that the state desperately doesn’t want you to see.

Just two weeks after the horrific, botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, Missouri plans to execute a man whose unique medical condition means that the execution is likely to go horribly wrong.

The man’s name is Russell Bucklew.

He suffers from cavernous hemangioma, a rare, severe, and lifelong condition that causes him frequent hemorrhaging, difficulty in breathing, and often excruciating pain. If the state of Missouri injects compounded pentobarbital into his veins, as they plan to, medical experts warn that the lethal injection drugs may not circulate properly and may not put him under anesthesia. Instead, Mr. Bucklew could remain awake as he hemorrhages, chokes, and slowly suffocates to death.

Even by its own standards, the prison where this scene is set to take place is utterly unprepared for the execution scheduled just hours away. Prison officials admitted that they should conduct medical tests to develop an execution protocol that would account for Mr. Bucklew’s medical condition, but they have failed to carry out these tests.

This is malpractice of cruel and unusual proportions, and the state of Missouri wants no record of it. The state’s strategy so far has been to hide information about the executions from the public and from Mr. Bucklew himself, including information about the sources and producers of the drugs the state plans to kill him with. The state also has refused to videotape and document the execution. So if Mr. Bucklew suffers in the way the medical experts have identified as likely, there will be no video record of his torturous, unconstitutional execution.

The problem of secrecy, however, isn’t just in Missouri.

Oklahoma also refused to disclose where it obtained the drugs it used in the botched execution of Mr. Lockett. Mr. Lockett remained conscious, struggling and writhing in pain, as the execution drugs slowly killed him over more than 40 minutes. Faced with the public outcry over the gruesome execution, the state still has refused to appoint an independent review. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin appointed Michael Thompson, commissioner of public safety, to conduct an investigation, but he is Fallin’s direct employee, a member of her cabinet, and a former employee of the Department of Corrections. The appointment falls far short of the true independence necessary to fully assess what went wrong with Mr. Lockett’s execution.

Missouri cannot get away with knowingly following protocols that present a real risk that Mr. Bucklew will be tortured to death. We cannot let him suffer the same fate as Mr. Lockett. Not only would this be unconstitutional, it would be a cruel departure from even our lowest standards of decency.

The time to intervene is now.

Yesterday we filed a request for emergency action in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and today the IACHR responded by asking the United States to halt the execution of Mr. Bucklew in Missouri and Charles Warner in Oklahoma until it can review whether those states’ proposed execution practices would violate international law.

These states should comply.

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