One of the legal issues being presented by the lawyers who are trying to keep Sedley Alley alive is an objection to the method of execution (lethal injection) used by the state of Tennessee. Across the country, lethal injection is being challenged as unnecessarily cruel and unusual. Since the second drug administered immobilizes the victim's muscles, incredible pain may be experienced while the victims is unable to move or express that discomfort. One of the killing drugs has been banned for putting dogs to sleep, since it was deemed unnecessarily painful. The Supreme court will be hearing just such a case in the coming months, and the outcome will certainly affect executions across the country. But, just in case we needed more proof that slowly poisoning someone was cruel and inhumane, consider this report of an execution that just occurred this week in Ohio:


Clark executed after vein collapse causes lengthy delay
By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday, May 2, 2006 12:50 PM
LUCASVILLE, Ohio - "It don't work. It don't work," Joseph Clark said repeatedly in what he thought were his last moments alive as he lay on the lethal injection table.But he didn't die -- not right away.

For the first time since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999, problems with lethal injection delayed the execution of the Toledo murderer by an hour. Clark's vein collapsed or "blew out" after the process had started this morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.

Clark, 57, was eventually executed at 11:26 a.m., but only after medical technicians struggled behind a closed curtain for about a half hour to find suitable veins to inject the deadly drugs.

Terry Collins, who took over Monday as director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said he ordered the curtain closed to shield victim family witnesses and his staff from being watched while they tried to get the IV lines going.

"I absolutely believe I made the right call closing the curtain and I would do it again," Collins said later. However, he said the whole process will be reviewed.

Media witnesses heard what they described as "moaning, crying out and guttural noises" while technicians worked on Clark behind the closed curtain.

However, prison officials said he was not in any pain and eventually went to sleep just before the execution resumed.

Collins said he was in touch with Gov. Bob Taft's office several times during the delay. He also summoned Greg Trout, the department's chief legal counsel, to the Death House to confer with George Pappas, Clark's attorney.

The trio of drugs -- sodium pentothal, an anesthetic, pancuronium bromide, a muscle paralyzer, and potassium chloride, which stops respiration and the heart -- has been used in Ohio and 35 other states for several years.

However, legal challenges to the lethal injection process are pending in several states, as well as at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Opponents argue the drugs can leave a prisoner paralyzed, but suffering great pain as they are executed. They say that violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Court records show Clark shot and killed David A. Manning on Jan. 13, 1984, during a robbery at the service station where Manning worked. Clark confessed to the crime after being arrested a few days later in connection with a bank robbery. He was also convicted for murder, without a death penalty specification, for the shooting death of Donald Harris, a convenience store clerk.
Mary Ellen Manning Gordon, the widow of the slain man who witnessed the execution, said she was glad to see Clark die.

"I didn't shed a single tear for Joseph Clark. He lived 22 years too long."