Jennifer Herndon cited an anesthesiologist who said that that “sub-potent pentobarbital” could severely disable the prisoner without killing him, potentially leaving him alive but permanently brain-damaged.
In a response, the Missouri attorney general’s office noted that virtually every recent inmate facing execution has raised the same issue.
“A dozen Missouri executions using pentobarbital have been rapid and painless,” the response read.
Herndon also expressed concerns about Missouri’s use of the sedative midazolam prior to executions. The state has said the drug is administered to help calm the nerves of inmates, and only to those who want it.
Herndon wrote that midazolam was used in three botched executions in other states in 2014.
Storey, 47, was sentenced to death three separate times in the same case.
The Missouri Supreme Court tossed the first conviction, citing concerns about ineffective assistance of counsel and “egregious” errors committed by Kenny Hulshof, who was with the Missouri attorney general’s office at the time and handled the prosecution. Hulshof was later a congressman and a candidate for governor.
Storey was tried again in 1997, and sentenced again to death. That conviction was also overturned, this time over a procedural error by the judge. Storey was sentenced to death a third time in 1999.
Missouri executed 10 people in 2014 — a record for the state — and Story’s death is the first this year.
Article Appeared @http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/11/missouri-executes-inmate-for-killing-neighbor-in-1990.html