Mo. appeals court considers lethal injection case

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A federal appeals court in St. Louis will hear legal arguments late Wednesday in a high-profile case that effectively has halted Missouri executions by lethal injection for nearly a year.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear 30-minute arguments from each side on whether Missouri's execution procedures are constitutional.

Attorneys for condemned murderer Michael Taylor of Kansas City are not arguing that his life be spared, although his family is hanging on to that hope. Taylor's attorneys are saying the procedures could result in a death with cruel and unusual suffering.

They are expected to urge the appeals court to uphold a federal judge's ruling, which set out how Missouri should reform its execution procedures.

They maintain the Department of Corrections has botched its execution process and abdicated its oversight authority to an incompetent physician, who altered critical parts of the procedure, including the amount of anesthetic given to inmates.

Lawyers with the Missouri Attorney General's office will argue, based on past court filings, that lethal injection executions in Missouri are humane and constitutional.

They have said executions in Missouri do not require the assistance of a doctor trained in anesthesia, as U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. has ordered.

They have argued that it may be impossible to find a doctor willing to participate in executions for ethical reasons. Gaitan initially required the state to have a board-certified anesthesiologist oversee executions.

That order met fierce resistance from the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Corrections Director Larry Crawford said his office has been unable to find a single board-certified anesthesiologist who would agree to participate.

With 50 men at the Potosi Correctional Center living with a death sentence, the state of Missouri wants to get executions back on track.

At the time of Taylor's scheduled execution last Feb. 1, Attorney General Jay Nixon had requested execution dates for four offenders, including Roderick Nunley, Taylor's cohort in the crime.

Taylor was convicted of killing 15-year-old Ann Harrison, who was waiting for a school bus in Kansas City when he and Nunley kidnapped her in 1989. Taylor pleaded guilty and said he was high on crack cocaine at the time.

Taylor came within hours of being executed last February, when the U.S. Supreme Court did not stand in the way of an appeals court's decision to hear the claim that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

Since then, the case has gone back and forth between the 8th Circuit and Gaitan. Whatever the appeals court decides after Wednesday's hearing likely will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Missouri is among nine states that have put executions on hold as they grapple with whether lethal injection is inhumane.

The lethal injection debate centers on the three drugs that are given in succession. Opponents say they can constitute cruel and unusual punishment if administered improperly.

If the initial anesthetic does not take hold, subsequent drugs that paralyze the condemned prisoner and stop his heart can cause excruciating pain, it's been argued. But the inmate would not be able to communicate the pain because of the paralysis.

The state maintains that the Corrections Department can execute prisoners constitutionally under the safeguards of its recently adopted protocol. The state argued a nurse, pharmacist or emergency medical technician can oversee the procedures.