Russell Bucklew has been on Missouri’s death row for more than two decades. Four years ago, he was within a couple of hours of getting a lethal injection from the state of Missouri when the sentence was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court. This was done while a lower court ruled on his lawyers’ argument that he should be spared a potentially "prolonged and excruciating execution" from pentobarbital and be executed by means of nitrogen hypoxia instead. Now that the courts have ruled against requiring a change in the method of execution, he’s hoping for another stay.
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Bucklew in 1996 shot dead the man he assumed was his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend in front of that man’s young son. Then he kidnapped and raped his ex-girlfriend over a period of several hours. He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to execution. But in 2014, he gained the stay while the courts determined whether or not his medical condition mandated a change in the method of execution.
This matter arose because Bucklew suffers from cavernous hemangioma. This causes the formation of unstable, blood-filled tumors in his head and neck. His lawyers argued before a district court that if he were injected with pentobarbital, the single drug Missouri uses for executions, one or more of those tumors could burst and choke him to death on his own blood, giving him a sense of suffocation. This, they said, would violate the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. Switching to nitrogen hypoxia to kill him, they told the court, would cause him to lose consciousness quicker and suffer less.
But, in a summary judgment, the district court ruled against Bucklew, and the 8th Circuit Court upheld that ruling:
In light of the evidence which showed that Bucklew's proposed method of execution — nitrogen hypoxia — would result in unconsciousness in approximately the same amount [of time] as Missouri's proposed method of execution - pentobarbital injection - the district court correctly concluded that Bucklew failed to satisfy his burden to provide evidence "establishing a known and viable alternative that would significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain [...]"
It would seem, under the circumstances, that Bucklew’s chances of getting a second stay are slim.
The method of killing him isn’t the only matter lawyers have raised. As the Kansas City Star editorial board concluded Sunday:
Even though Bucklew has spent years on death row, federal defense attorneys new to the case say that they are just now doing some of the most basic work that American Bar Association standards require in all death penalty cases.
The attorneys work for the new federal defense Capital Habeas Unit, which was just put in place last year at the insistence of Missouri judges. Other states have such units, which are considered money savers for taxpayers because they ensure that people who are trained and experienced in death penalty cases are involved throughout the process.
But because the unit is new, staff only began studying Bucklew’s case in November. They’ve completed about one-third of the work required for a capital case.
There’s an easy solution to all the time and money spent on death penalty trials and their appeals. The U.S. and all its states should, like the European Union, end the barbarism of capital punishment. Life without parole is a sufficient sentence to remove murderers from the rest of society permanently.