Lethal Injection

BOSTON -- So we have a national moratorium of sorts. An unofficial stay of execution. All quiet in the death chambers. In the days since the Supreme Court decided to take on another death penalty case, 11 states - including Texas, the capital of capital punishment - have suspended executions. In two more states, inmates slated for death next week may be granted a reprieve. Even the Europeans who led the World Day Against the Death Penalty on Wednesday must have missed having their favorite international target.

Efforts to repeal the death penalty in Maryland were dealt an apparently fatal blow yesterday when a key state Senate committee defeated the measure, leaving a court-ordered moratorium on state executions in place and some legislators weighing a study of the issue. Weeks of behind-the-scenes wrangling and lobbying by religious and law enforcement officials culminated yesterday with the bill's defeat in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on a tie vote. Sen. Alex X. Mooney, the Frederick Republican and devout Catholic who was expected to swing the Senate vote, did not support the repeal after trying unsuccessfully to exempt prisoners who kill again while serving a jail term.

Flint Gregory Hunt, awaiting execution in the state's gas chamber next week, now says he wants to die by lethal injection -- but a city judge says it's too late to let the convicted killer change his mind.Baltimore Circuit Judge Richard T. Rombro, presiding over an emergency hearing on Hunt's request yesterday, said he feared that allowing an 11th-hour change would open up challenges to the method of death that could further delay Hunt's 12-year wait for execution.But delay may be inevitable.

Flint Gregory Hunt will not be executed in the state's gas chamber; instead he will die by lethal injection on a 300-pound steel table as he had requested in an 11th-hour petition to the state, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.The ruling fulfills what is perhaps one of the last wishes Hunt will have before his scheduled execution next week for the 1985 murder of Baltimore police Officer Vincent J. Adolfo.The court's unanimous, two-page decision included the condition that Hunt waive his right to challenge any further the method of his execution.

If Flint Gregory Hunt holds to his wish to be executed in the gas chamber next week, it will be one of the last uses in this country of what is seen as a dying method of capital punishment.It will be the final time in Maryland that a correctional officer pulls the lever that drops crystals of sodium cyanide into a bowl of sulfuric acid and water to create the deadly vapors -- an execution process that has taken place only four times before in the state's history."It's slowly going away," Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said of the gas chamber.

AFTER SAYING he wanted to die in the gas chamber so his execution would look like "murder," Flint Gregory Hunt changed his mind last week and asked for lethal injection.Although a Circuit Court judge denied his request the Court of Appeals granted it, which will make Hunt the second person to die by injection in Maryland. The first was triple-murderer John F. Thanos in 1994 when injection became the official means of capital punishment.By choosing the gas chamber and then changing his mind at the last minute, Hunt may have been trying a ploy to gain a further delay.

"Prelude to a Scream," by Jim Nisbet. Carroll & Graf. 384 pages. $24. Jim Nisbet has taken an urban novel noir, folded in a grisly medical thriller, sprinkled on some literary pretensions for good measure, and come up with a impressively repulsive melange.Your own tastes should tell you whether to take this as a recommendation or a warning. The book's inventive spirit may please readers who can stomach aberrant behavior of the medical, sexual and ethical varieties. But even these hardy souls should immediately start practicing the fine art of suspending disbelief.

A Baltimore judge yesterday signed a death warrant for condemned killer Flint Gregory Hunt, setting his execution for the week of June 10.The warrant signed by Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan came two days after Hunt, who is sentenced to die for the Nov. 18, 1985 killing of Baltimore Police Officer Vincent J. Adolfo, lost one of his dwindling remaining appeals. Officer Adolfo, 25, was trying to handcuff Hunt in a dark East Baltimore alley when Hunt, who had a long criminal record, fired two deadly shots.

It is expensive, controversial and has been carried out only once in 35 years.And Maryland's death penalty will be debated again today when lawyers for Scotland Eugene Williams appear before the state's highest court to plead for his life.Williams, convicted in the 1994 shooting deaths of Washington lawyers Julie Gilbert and Jose Trias in their weekend home near Annapolis, is under two death sentences.His lawyers say the death penalty statue is unconstitutional because it allows a judge or jury to use a less-stringent standard to decide whether to impose the penalty than they would use to determine guilt.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court turned aside yesterday the third appeal in the past four years by Flint Gregory Hunt of Baltimore, the death row inmate who now appears to be the next in line for execution in Maryland.The justices made no comment as they refused to allow Hunt to reopen a constitutional challenge to his conviction for the murder of Baltimore police officer Vincent Adolfo in November 1985.The court's action clears the way for Maryland officials to schedule an execution date, although Hunt has another legal challenge pending before Baltimore Circuit Court.

The fundamental question to be asked about the "serious flaws" that a legislative panel reviewing Maryland's death penalty protocols has found in how the state executes condemned inmates is this: Are there substantive ethical and legal problems with the procedure that require further study before executions can proceed, as panel members insist? Or is the finding merely an excuse to extend the de facto moratorium on executions that has existed since 2006, as death penalty supporters argue?

Delay execution regulations While we failed this year to repeal Maryland's violation of the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, we will be back. The Baltimore Sun's admirable stance over the years against the death penalty has always been appreciated. Yet I am baffled by the editorial "A dishonest delay" (June 26). The writer seems confused: "legislators shouldn't drag out approvals of execution regulations to maintain a moratorium; the governor should commute death sentences instead."

Gov. Martin O'Malley has reluctantly set in motion the process to resume state executions. He didn't really have much of a choice after the U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection. That's when Mr. O'Malley lost his main reason for delaying a redrafting of the execution protocols that had been invalidated by the Maryland Court of Appeals more than a year ago. Last week, he ordered state public safety officials to begin the rewrite. Capital punishment has lost support among Marylanders, but it remains the law, unfortunately, and governors often are called upon to enforce laws that they morally oppose.

Gov. Martin O'Malley moved yesterday toward ending Maryland's moratorium on executions, saying he "sadly" ordered the drafting of procedures for executing inmates by lethal injection. The announcement by O'Malley, who has opposed the death penalty, came nearly 18 months after the state's highest court ruled that the Maryland's execution protocols were improperly developed without legislative oversight or public input. And last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injection protocols virtually identical to those Maryland's.

Washington -- Suggesting that they are deeply divided over the legality of execution procedures used by most states, the Supreme Court justices asked dozens of questions yesterday about the drugs used in lethal injections and how much risk of pain is permissible when putting a convicted killer to death. The questioning came during oral arguments in a Kentucky case that could decide whether widely used lethal injection rules violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

BOSTON -- So we have a national moratorium of sorts. An unofficial stay of execution. All quiet in the death chambers. In the days since the Supreme Court decided to take on another death penalty case, 11 states - including Texas, the capital of capital punishment - have suspended executions. In two more states, inmates slated for death next week may be granted a reprieve. Even the Europeans who led the World Day Against the Death Penalty on Wednesday must have missed having their favorite international target.

The questions raised in a Kentucky case that is headed to the Supreme Court closely parallel the issues laid out in a legal challenge filed by a Maryland death row inmate, whose appeals prompted the state's indefinite halt to executions. Attorneys for convicted killer Vernon L. Evans Jr., as well as local death penalty opponents, said yesterday that they will be closely watching as the high court weighs for the first time the constitutional questions surrounding lethal injection cases.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court said yesterday it would hear a new challenge to the way states carry out executions by lethal injection, possibly banning the use of outdated chemical concoctions that might cause dying inmates excruciating pain. Such a ruling would not prohibit lethal injections, but it could force officials in most states to use new or different chemicals so inmates are not subjected to an "unnecessary risk of pain and suffering." In December, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose blocked California from carrying out executions using the older chemical concoction on the grounds it would cause an unnecessary risk of a painful death.

Fred Warren Bennett, a criminal defense attorney who developed specialties in capital litigation and the rules of evidence, died Sunday in a car crash in Pasadena. He was 65. Defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges and family members described him yesterday as a tireless attorney and tenacious litigator who was passionately devoted to protecting the rights of the accused and to providing top-quality counsel to the less fortunate. A former top federal public defender for Maryland who opened his own practice, Mr. Bennett worked furiously on the cases of two of the last four inmates executed in Maryland.

Lawyers representing death row inmate Vernon L. Evans Jr. have asked a Baltimore County judge to overturn the convicted killer's sentence, arguing that a juror in his case was biased. Evans' attorneys argued yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court that a new sentencing hearing was warranted because a member of the jury that sentenced Evans had said before being selected that he wanted to be on the panel because he thought Evans should be executed. Prosecutors said evidence did not support that claim, and they argued that no new sentencing hearing should be granted.