Alabama inmate asks appeals court to halt execution

Christopher Eugene Brooks
Christopher Eugene Brooks
photo Christopher Eugene Brooks

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - An Alabama inmate on Monday asked an appellate court to halt his execution scheduled for next month.

An attorney for Christopher Brooks filed the appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal judge last week denied his emergency stay request.

Brooks is scheduled to be put to death Jan. 21 for the 1992 rape and bludgeoning death of Deann Campbell. The execution would be Alabama's first in more than two years and the first with the state's new three-drug combination for lethal injection.

Brooks has said his execution should be postponed until after a hearing in federal court on the constitutionality of the state's new drug combination.

Brooks and other inmates claim that Alabama's three-drug protocol violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and that midazolam is an ineffective anesthetic given before the next two subsequent drugs stop the inmate's heart and breathing.

"There are feasible alternatives that eliminate the risk that he will be paralyzed, suffocating, and unable to alert anyone before he is burned alive from the inside by potassium chloride," Assistant Federal Defender John Palombi wrote in Dec. 4 request to Chief U.S. District Judge William Keith Watkins.

The judge denied the stay on Dec. 22 request, saying that Brooks had not proposed a feasible alternative and had unreasonably delayed his litigation efforts. Brooks joined the ongoing litigation in November.

A decision on the stay request is likely to come just days before the scheduled execution. The 11th Circuit ordered an expedited schedule with the final brief due Jan 12.

Midazolam gained notoriety after several executions took longer than expected, or where inmates groaned or writhed in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld the drug's use in executions, rejecting a similar constitutional challenge filed by Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip.

Watkins wrote that midazolam had been used without any significant problems in multiple executions, and inmates are required to suggest a viable alternate execution method. Inmates have referred to that as a "suicide burden" but Watkins said its intent is to bring litigation to a close.

Watkins wrote that Brooks had suggested a single dose of either pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, drugs the state has said it can no longer access. Brooks also suggested, as a third alternative, a single dose of midazolam, because some experts have argued that it could kill an inmate alone if given enough time to work.

"Brooks pleaded an alternative that is part of the present protocol, which means his inevitable execution will be either with three drugs beginning with midazolam, or with midazolam alone, which undermines his arguments about the three-drug protocol," Watkins wrote.

Upcoming Events