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Controversial Drug Used in Virginia's Latest Executions

Mallory Noe-Payne

Last week Virginia executed 36-year-old William Morva for the murders of a sheriff’s deputy and security guard back in 2006. In the final hours of his life, Morva’s lawyers raised concerns over how Virginia gets the drugs it uses in executions, and why they may not be working properly.

 

Last week outside Greenville Correctional Center, a small group of anti-death penalty activists held vigil as William Morva was executed. With song, prayer and candles they marked the moment.

Despite a last minute appeal one of Morva’s lawyers, the execution went on. Rob Lee had asked the Governor for a reprieve, to investigate concerns over one of the drugs used during lethal injection.

“And we got a response relatively quickly from the Governor’s counsels,” Lee recalled. “Thanking us for bringing the matter to his attention and stating that it had been given careful consideration and the Governor was going to deny our request for a reprieve.”

Lee's concerns came from a news report that had been released the day before by The Guardian, including details about another recent Virginia execution.

Gray’s Execution

Ricky Gray had been sentenced to death for the brutal murder of a young family in Richmond in 2006. His execution was slated for January 2017.

But leading up to the date, Virginia officials faced a problem. they didn’t have the drugs to kill him. Pharmaceutical manufacturers, opposed to the death penalty, had stopped supplying them.

So Virginia lawmakers struck a deal. They passed a law allowing the state to buy the drugs from a compounding pharmacy instead. A compounding pharmacy makes drugs to order, but also under less scrutiny from the FDA and the Virginia Board of Pharmacy. The deal also allowed the state to buy the drugs in secret, shielding the identity of the mixing facility from the public and the press.

In January, Gray was executed using a compounded drug called midazolam, purchased from an unknown compounding pharmacy in Virginia, for 63x the normal price.

“I can’t say of course what he experienced, what I can say is that midazolam is not an anesthetic,” says Mark Edgar, a pathologist at Emory University.

My concern is that it might be like drowning from within, having your lungs fill with fluid and not being able to do anything about it.

Like Xanax or vallium, midazolam is a sedative used to calm people before surgery, but never as the sole anesthetic.  In some executions, though, it’s used to put inmates to sleep before a second drug paralyzes them, and then a third stops their heart.

In Oklahoma and Ohio, inmates have woken up after midazolam is administered.

Pathologist Mark Edgar has reviewed more than a dozen autopsies from executions. One of the reports that recently landed on his desk was Ricky Gray’s, provided from Gray's family via his.

It showed blood-tinged liquid in his airways.

“That’s something that you don’t typically see in a hospital autopsy, that’s more characteristic of, for instance, a sarin gas attack,” Edgar says. “My concern is that it might be like drowning from within, having your lungs fill with fluid and not being able to do anything about it.”

Morva’s Execution

Credit Steve Helber / AP
/
AP
Death penalty protesters (L-Dale Brumfield, R-Jack Payden-Travers) conduct a candlelight vigil outside the Greensville Correctional Center, Thursday, July 6, 2017, in Jarratt, Va.

Witnesses to Gray’s execution described movement and heavy breathing after the compounded midazolam was administered. Edgar says if the drug didn’t render Gray fully unconscious, he would have experienced pain, terror and panic.

“It seems like it’s coming close to cruel and unusual punishment. If you knew that they were not in any way aware, I wouldn’t be concerned,” Edgar says. “But I don’t think we do know that.”

It was this report that William Morva’s lawyers saw just shortly before his execution. Despite their appeals, Morva was executed using the same drug. Witnesses described gulping and chest convulsions.

Lisa Kinney, a spokeswoman for Virginia’s Department of Corrections, say the drugs are tested monthly, and there’s no plan to discontinue the use of midazalom.

 

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association

 

Mallory Noe-Payne is a Radio IQ reporter based in Richmond.
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