Connecticut has no drugs to execute dozen inmates left on death row

What’s Connecticut going to do if one of its 12 death row residents decides he’s been there long enough and volunteers to be executed?No, the answer isn’t “go ahead and execute him,” as the state did in 2005 when murderer Michael Ross asked to become the first — and so far, only — person to be legally killed by lethal injection. It’s no longer that convenient because Connecticut has none of the three drugs required by law to administer its lethal injections, the method of choice since the state electrocuted its last involuntary death penalty recipient 54 years ago. You will recall the state abolished capital punishment in 2012 after apparently concluding it is morally wrong for a state to kill anyone — except for those men sentenced to death before Governor Malloy signed the bill repealing the penalty on April 25 of that year. It is presumably morally right to execute these men, although the state has exhibited no appetite for the practice since it sent “Mad Dog” Taborsky to the chair in the old Wethersfield Prison in 1960. Those left on death row were grandfathered for lethal injection out of sympathy for the families of their victims, especially the family of Dr. William Petit who aggressively sought death for the two men who brutally murdered his wife and two daughters in an invasion of their Cheshire home. This provides the pair and 10 others with an exclusivity not conferred upon any other murderers who were condemned to death but not executed in Connecticut, thanks to the intervention of the courts.To kill any or all of the 12 leftover lethal injection candidates, the anonymous executioner — we’ll get to him — must use sodium thiopental to induce unconsciousness, pancronium bromide to paralyze the muscles and potassium chloride to stop the heart. The state can’t get any of these drugs because domestic and foreign drug manufacturers and sellers, including those in all 28 European Union nations, won’t sell drugs to be used in executions. This has left the 32 states and federal government still executing people with lethal injections, a method they considered more humane than the chair, the firing squad or the gas chamber, in a difficult position. Some are obtaining drugs through irregular channels like those compounding pharmacies that were unregulated until one in Massachusetts was caught selling contaminated drugs that caused meningitis deaths. Others have been reduced to other forms of somewhat illegal drug dealing.Also complicating the orderly killing by the state are questions about the executioner. We don’t know who injected Ross in 2005, but the job was frequently undertaken by a professional until 2010 when the American Board of Anesthesiologists announced it would seize the credentials of any anesthesiologist who takes part in an execution.Death penalty states have been experimenting — on the only subjects available — with substitute drugs. That’s what happened in Oklahoma, but the substitutes didn’t work and caused the injection recipient to thrash on a gurney for 43 minutes before dying of an apparent heart attack. Since then, Oklahoma and other states have suspended lethal injections for now as they ponder returning to the electric chair, the firing squad or the gas chamber or maybe even stopping the practice.The Associated Press asked Michael Lawlor, Connecticut’s undersecretary of criminal justice policy, what the state would do if it had to execute someone, maybe another volunteer like Ross, and he admitted he didn’t know. The State Supreme Court could make all of this moot if it rules in favor of Eduardo Santiago, an inmate whose arguments for abolishing the death penalty for everyone were heard last year. A decision is expected soon. Even if the court rules against Santiago, there are plenty of other legal issues awaiting appeal or resolution.Michael Fitzpatrick, one of the attorneys who represented Ross, told The Connecticut Post that federal courts have yet to even examine whether the state’s abolished death penalty law, which keeps these men on death row, is constitutional. We could end this mindless and barbaric activity through legislative action or by pardoning the dozen men and automatically sending them to prison for life without parole. Connecticut governors cannot issue pardons, but the seven members of the Board of Pardons and Parole the governor appoints can and should.Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.