Bucklew death penalty case set for court date in September

A federal appellate court will take up convicted murderer Russell Bucklew's case in September.

Bucklew, 46, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection May 21, but less than six hours before his death warrant was set to expire, the U.S. Supreme Court granted his application for a stay of execution pending appeal in the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The stay ended several days of legal wrangling between Bucklew's attorneys and Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster's office.

The appellate court now is poised to take up Bucklew's case Sept. 9 in St. Louis, federal court records show.

Bucklew, who was convicted in 1997 of the murder of Michael Sanders of Cape Girardeau County, suffers from a rare medical condition called cavernous hemangioma that causes weakened blood vessels and vascular tumors in his nose, mouth and throat that obstruct his airways.

An Emory University medical professor who reviewed Bucklew's medical records has said his condition poses the risk of a prolonged, unduly painful execution.

Among the concerns: Bucklew's tumors could rupture, causing him to choke to death on his own blood; the lethal drug, pentobarbital, could fail to circulate properly in his compromised vascular system; or the pentobarbital could interact with drugs he takes for his condition, prolonging his death and causing severe pain.

Any of those circumstances would violate the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments," his attorneys have said.

In 1997, a Boone County, Missouri, jury convicted Bucklew of shooting Sanders to death in front of his two young sons before kidnapping Sanders' girlfriend, Stephanie Pruitt Ray, at gunpoint and then raping her.

Ray, who was Bucklew's ex-girlfriend, and her two young daughters had been staying with Sanders while they hid from Bucklew, who had threatened and physically assaulted Ray in the past.

Police caught up to Bucklew in St. Louis, but he later escaped from the Cape Girardeau County Jail and attacked two people -- including Ray's mother -- with a hammer before being recaptured.

Koster argued in May that Bucklew, who has been on death row for 17 years and has known about his condition for two decades, should have raised those concerns earlier instead of waiting until less than two weeks before his scheduled execution to file a lawsuit.

But one of Bucklew's attorneys, Cheryl Pilate, said her client could not have filed his claim earlier, because the state has not monitored his condition adequately, and he lacked the money to hire his own medical experts.

Only when Bucklew's death was imminent were attorneys able to convince medical experts to help, Pilate wrote in a May 16 filing.

"It is extremely disingenuous for the defendants to accuse Mr. Bucklew of dragging his feet on this grievance. … Even though Mr. Bucklew was indigent and counsel made a prima facie showing that Missouri's execution protocol was at least constitutionally suspect, as applied to Mr. Bucklew, the State actively opposed Mr. Bucklew's efforts to obtain the funds necessary to secure an expert," she wrote.

In the filing, Pilate cited several instances, beginning in June 2008, in which Bucklew's attorneys sought but were denied funds for expert services.

The May 21 stay of execution was the latest in a series of delays in Bucklew's case.

His execution already has been postponed several times, partly by appeals and partly by issues surrounding the drugs used for lethal injections.

Lethal injection has been the focus of increasing scrutiny in recent years. Some states have been forced to change their lethal injection protocols as a result of drug shortages caused by manufacturers' reluctance to sell their products for use in execution.

To obtain replacements, many states -- including Missouri -- have turned to compounding pharmacies, which are not heavily regulated, and whose identities are kept secret.

Last month, Koster suggested the state establish its own laboratory to produce drugs for lethal injections, thereby resolving the supply issue.

Earlier this month, a Cole County, Missouri, circuit judge rejected inmate John Winfield's request to force the state to disclose the identity of its drug supplier, saying the Sunshine Law case needed to be resolved through a trial rather than a court order.

A pair of ugly executions earlier this year intensified the debate surrounding lethal injection.

In January, Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die, gasping and snorting, after being given a sedative and a painkiller.

And an Oklahoma inmate, Clayton Lockett, took more than 40 minutes to die of a heart attack after his vein collapsed during his April 29 execution, prompting the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to stay another inmate's execution for six months to allow time for an investigation.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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