Lawyers for a South Carolina death row inmate will be in federal court Wednesday trying to convince a judge that the state is not properly carrying out lethal injections or firing squad executions, an argument meant to spare the prisoner just two days before he’s scheduled to die.
Stephen Stanko’s attorneys said the two doses of lethal injection drugs used in the past three executions by that method show those subjected to the procedure have died a lingering death, still conscious as they felt like they were drowning when fluid rushed into their lungs.
Stanko changed his mind and decided to die by lethal injection because of accounts about the last firing squad death.
In that April execution, the volunteer shooters nearly missed Mikal Mahdi’s heart, meaning the man convicted of killing an off-duty police officer took three to four times as long to die as he was supposed to, Stanko’s lawyers said in court papers.
One expert hired by Stanko’s attorneys said the evidence suggests the firing squad may have aimed slightly below the target or the target was not placed on Mahdi’s heart to “cause great pain before his death,” according to court papers filed last week.
South Carolina says there’s no reason to stop the execution
Lawyers for the state vigorously denied the claims. They point out that the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected a similar last-ditch appeal on May 28. They said every execution is different and that lawyers representing incarcerated people have not proven any condemned prisoner suffered gratuitous pain.
“So (perhaps) it’s not the method that’s the issue — instead, these inmates just don’t want to have their sentences carried out and are willing to make any argument that they can,” wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.
Lawyers for the state will ask federal Judge Richard Gergel on Wednesday to dismiss the claims.
Stanko’s crime was killing his friend Henry Turner
Stanko would be the sixth inmate executed in South Carolina in nine months. There were originally four executions scheduled around the country this week, one in South Carolina and one each in Florida and Alabama. On Monday, an Oklahoma judge granted a temporary stay to a man scheduled to be put to death Thursday.
Stanko, 57, is slated to die at 6 p.m. Friday at a Columbia prison for killing his 74-year-old friend, Henry Turner. Stanko went to Turner’s Horry County home in April 2006 after lying about his father dying.
Hours before killing Turner, Stanko beat and strangled his girlfriend in her Georgetown County home and raped her daughter before slashing the teen’s throat. The daughter survived and testified against him at one of his trials. Stanko was also sentenced to death in that case.
Lawyers say executions aren’t done properly
Stanko’s lawyers, in their 49-page brief, include a number of ways their experts think South Carolina is improperly carrying out executions.
They include using bullets in the firing squad that aren’t powerful enough to guarantee the heart will be destroyed, failing to properly oversee how an IV line is placed for lethal injections and improper storage of the powerful sedative pentobarbital, which is used to kill inmates.
The lawyers said the state is using two doses of pentobarbital in executions because — while inmates might be paralyzed by the drug — they remain conscious enough to feel like they are drowning and take longer than 10 minutes to die.
Attorneys for the state said witnesses to the executions have not reported any signs of distress and said the inmates appeared to stop breathing within a minute or two.
The most serious accusations in Stanko’s lawsuit come from Dr. Jonathan Groner, an expert in lethal injection and other capital punishments and a surgeon who teaches at Ohio State University.
“I am concerned that some element of those responsible for carrying out Mr. Mahdi’s execution intended not to hit his target and to cause great pain before his death,” Groner wrote.
South Carolina says nothing went wrong
State Correction Department officials deny anything went wrong in Mahdi’s execution. Agency leaders have signed sworn statements saying that all three guns fired and no bullets or fragments were found in the death chamber after Mahdi’s lawyers suggested one shot missed entirely.
“How bullets react once they strike the body is something that neither SCDC nor the members of the firing squad can control. That one condemned inmate dies more quickly than another does not necessarily mean that something went awry in one execution,” the state said.
Complicating any investigation into Madhi’s death is an inadequate autopsy. It did not include X-rays to allow the results to be independently verified. Only one photo was taken of Mahdi’s body and there were no close-ups of the wounds. The inmate’s clothing was not examined to determine where the target was placed or how it aligned with the damage the bullets caused, according to forensic pathologist Terri Haddix of California, one of the defense experts.
Stanko’s lawyers want to pause his execution to take a closer look at Mahdi’s death and require the three firing squad members to take a sworn oath they will “shoot at the target in good faith.”
