By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — A Fulton County judge ruled the state’s new lethal injection cocktail meets constitutional requirements, removing the obstacle blocking a Savannah murderer’s execution tonight, at least temporarily.
On Wednesday, Fulton Superior Court Judge Wendy Shoob said the substitution of one sedative for another is not significant. She noted that other states already have used the drug in question, the barbituate pentobarbital.
Lawyers for Roy Blankenship said they will appeal the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, leaving the matter far from resolved. If needed, the case could move to the federal courts.
Blankenship was sentenced to die for the 1978 murder of an elderly Savannah woman, Sarah Mims Bowen. She died of heart failure after she was beaten and sexually assaulted.
Georgia and several other states were forced to switch drugs when the Italian drug manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped producing it.
Several states chose pentobarbital as a substitute, even with strong protests from the drug’s Danish manufacturer, Lundbeck, which said the drug was not approved for use in lethal injections.
“This drug wasn’t designed as an anesthetic,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. “Even the manufacturer says it’s a questionable use for this purpose.”
However, in a statement issued after Shoob’s ruling, the Georgia Department of Corrections said, “Georgia’s three-drug lethal injection protocol has been repeatedly recognized as constitutionally appropriate by the state and federal courts. The use of pentobarbital in place of sodium thiopental has also been found to be constitutional by every court to address this issue.”
The debate is whether pentobarbital acts quickly enough to prevent a person being executed from experiencing significant pain when the drugs have taken effect. The second one causes paralysis and the third stops the heart.
Shoob wrote in her order that the U.S. Supreme Court has said states don’t have to avoid the risk of pain, just “needless suffering.”
Fourteen executions nationwide this year have used pentobarbital, either alone or in combination with other drugs.
States that have used pentobarbital are Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
Copyright 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution