APNewsBreak: WA changes execution method

Washington state has changed its method of execution from a three-drug cocktail to a one-drug system, according to paperwork filed Tuesday with the state Supreme Court.

The filing by state Attorney General Rob McKenna reveals that the state Department of Corrections made the decision last Thursday. McKenna wants the high court to dismiss portions of the appeal of death-row inmate Darold Stenson, arguing that a challenge of the drug protocol's constitutionality is now moot.

The department is in the process of rewriting the execution policy that will make Washington the second state in the nation to use the one-drug method.

Ohio switched in January after the botched execution of Romell Broom that was halted by Gov. Ted Strickland in September. Executioners unsuccessfully tried for hours to find a usable vein for injection, and Broom has appealed the state's attempt to try again.

Ohio has executed three men under the new method since December.

The three-drug method uses sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Only sodium thiopental, followed by a saline flush, is used in the one-drug policy. Under the amended policy in Washington state, an additional 5 grams of sodium thiopental will be made available at the time of execution in case the first dose does not kill the inmate.

The motion filed with the court Tuesday said the decision to amend the protocol was made in light of both Ohio's use of the method and "the opinions of experts who have advised the Department."

The new policy will change the presumed method for lethal injection to the one-drug protocol, but the three-drug injection method will be allowed for inmates who request it.

"The Department maintains that the three drug protocol is constitutional," the motion reads.

Stenson, who shot his wife and business partner in Clallam County, is one of three death-row inmates suing Washington state, arguing that its preferred method of execution needed a major overhaul to satisfy constitutional bans on cruel punishment.

Also suing are Jonathan Gentry, who killed a 12-year-old girl in Kitsap County, and Cal Coburn Brown, who tortured and killed a Burien woman.

Last March, the state Supreme Court stayed the execution of Brown just hours before he was set to die. McKenna filed for a lift of that stay after a Thurston County Superior Court judge ruled last July that the state's lethal injection procedures were constitutional.

The stay will remain in place while the appeal process continues.

Stenson attorney Sherilyn Peterson said she still needs to see the final language but called the decision by the Department of Corrections "a complete victory."

"We only question why it has taken so long for the state to accept the need for change," Peterson wrote in an e-mail.

Stenson's attorneys have a civil case against the state challenging the method of execution, asking it to switch to the one-drug protocol. He has two additional independent challenges to the execution process in that lawsuit and two separate challenges to his criminal conviction which are still ongoing.

In prior filings, the state argued that Washington's three-drug lethal injection system passed constitutional tests because it was substantially similar to a Kentucky system upheld in 2008 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dick Morgan, prisons director for state Department of Corrections, said that while they still stand by the constitutionality of the three-drug system, they had been studying the one-drug option ever since Ohio announced in November it would make the switch.

"From our standpoint, the one-drug protocol is simpler for us to administer, and it no longer embroils the department in the legal challenges to the three-drug protocol," he said.

Before deciding to switch to the one-drug method, Washington, like roughly three dozen states, had performed lethal injections by administering successive doses of three separate drugs. The chemicals are intended to render a condemned prisoner unconscious, then paralyze the body, and, finally, stop the heart.

Washington death-row inmates may opt for hanging instead of lethal injection. The last hanging was of Charles Campbell in May 1994. The state's last execution was the lethal injection death of James Elledge in 2001.

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Washington state Attorney General: http://www.atg.wa.gov/

Supreme Court of Washington: http://www.courts.wa.gov