Published Feb. 3 by Associated Press.

Connecticut court upholds lethal injection procedure involving EMTs

By STEVE FEICA
Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn. — The state Supreme Court Thursday ruled that the use of lethal injection is constitutional because it is the most humane method of execution.

The 5-2 ruling came in the case of death row inmate Daniel Webb, who had challenged lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.

Chief Justice Francis M. McDonald Jr., writing for the majority, said ''there is no objective evidence ... that unnecessary pain is inherent in execution by lethal injection.''

The court ruled that proper administration of lethal injection would result in a quick and painless death and ''did not offend current standards of decency.''

Webb is on death row for the 1989 murder of banker Diane Gellenbeck. She was kidnapped from a downtown parking garage, taken to Hartford's Keney Park and shot seven times.

Mark Rademacher, Webb's public defender, had argued that lethal injection could meet constitutional standards if practiced by proper medical personnel.

But under the state's plan, either emergency medical technicians, paramedics or nurses would be used to set up the intravenous tube that administers the deadly doses of medication. A team of correction officers administer the execution.

Rademacher argued that an anesthesiologist needs to be present to ensure the defendant receives the proper dosage and is kept unconscious throughout the execution. He said a person without medical training will not be able to tell if the prisoner can feel pain.

''The court says that argument is irrelevant until there's a history of botched executions in the state,'' Rademacher said Thursday. ''They're taking a wait-and-see approach, so people are going to have to go through painful executions before they do anything about it.''

The justices ruled that the possibility of a ''botched execution is extremely remote'' under Connecticut's procedure.

Prosecutors argued that the drugs the prisoner would receive are five times the amount necessary to cause sleep, and take effect almost instantaneously.

The Connecticut Constitution makes no direct reference to ''cruel and unusual punishment.'' The subject is alluded to when the document deals with due process issues, but the high court rejected arguments that using medical procedures to killing inmates is so abhorrent that it would be a violation of due process rights.

Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., one of the two dissenting justices, said in a short written statement said his previous opposition to the death penalty is well documented.

The other dissenter, Justice Joette Katz, questioned the right of the state to kill.

''The issue for me is not whether the defendant who has committed such hideous atrocities has the right to life, but whether we as a society have the right to kill,'' Katz wrote.

The Supreme Court had reviewed Webb's case once before. The court in 1996 upheld Webb's conviction and death sentence but allowed him to return to Superior Court to argue that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

Webb is among seven men currently on the state's death row. The state has not executed an inmate since 1960.

Webb has also filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the conditions on death row at the maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

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