MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A federal judge on Tuesday stayed the execution of an Alabama prisoner two days before he was scheduled to be put to death by injection.
Tommy Arthur’s execution had been set for Thursday. U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins granted the last-minute reprieve to hear Arthur’s claim that the state’s lethal-injection procedure is unconstitutional because it uses the same drugs used in botched executions in other states.
Watkins said it was in the public interest to grant a delay and review Arthur’s claim, “rather than executing him via a potentially unconstitutional lethal injection.” Watkins scheduled a May 5 trial on Arthur’s claim.
Arthur has spent three decades on Alabama’s death row. He was convicted of the 1982 contract killing of Troy Wicker at Wicker’s residence in Muscle Shoals.
Alabama has not had an execution since 2013 because of a shortage of lethal-injection drugs. European manufacturers began refusing to sell the drugs for use in executions.
The Alabama Department of Corrections adopted a new drug combination in September to resume executions. Arthur would have been the first inmate put to death with the new combination. The new drug protocol calls for the sequential injections of midazolam hydrochloride to cause unconsciousness; rocuronium bromide, a paralytic agent that stops breathing; and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
Lawyers for Arthur said midazolam hydrochloride is unreliable as a sedative and that Arthur would feel the effects of the two drugs administered after it. Midazolam hydrochloride was used in executions in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma in which inmates gasped, writhed or groaned and took longer than expected to die.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month halted executions in Oklahoma to review concerns raised about the effectiveness of midazolam as a sedative. The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday gave a last-minute stay of execution to an inmate in that state, pending the high court’s decision.
In previous court filings, the Alabama attorney general’s office argued there was no evidence that any of the inmates suffered, saying the observed symptoms could have been associated with sleep or sleep apnea.
The attorney general’s office and a lawyer for Arthur declined to comment on Tuesday.