Executions

Larry Chisolm, the first black district attorney in Chatham County, Ga., was sitting in his modern, sixth-floor office, tolerating an interview but declining to speak about the problem that he may have to address soon -- the one that could come to define and complicate the rest of his young political career. It is a problem he inherited. The problem of death row inmate Troy Davis.

Over the course of two hours, nurses attempted 18 times last month to find a vein in Romell Broom in which to inject the convicted murderer with a lethal combination of drugs. Broom even tried to help them, massaging his arms and straightening tubes. Finally, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland called off the execution -- for the day, at least. A rare occurrence? Ohio, 2006: The execution of Joseph Lewis Clark took close to 90 minutes after executioners had trouble finding a vein. "It don't work, it don't work," Clark told them.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his lawyers have switched strategies in the legal battle to resume executions, agreeing to submit revised lethal injection protocols for public review rather than continue appealing state court decisions that the redrafted rules are illegal. Although the move is intended to speed up a return of capital punishment, conservative law-and-order advocates and victims' rights groups expressed frustration over the persistent delays.

Corrections officials heard overwhelming condemnation of proposed new lethal injection procedures Tuesday at the first-ever public hearing on execution methods in the state. Contrary to the solid majority of Californians who in opinion polls expressed support for the death penalty, only two out of more than 100 speakers supported a resumption of death sentences once legal hurdles are cleared.

Executions and new death sentences continued their nationwide decline in 2008, as states wrestled with legal, moral and financial concerns about capital punishment. Thirty-seven people were executed in nine states, the lowest total in 14 years and a 62% drop from the 98 death sentences carried out in 1999, according to statistics compiled by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

Iran's chief judge has decreed that executions will no longer be held in public, the IRNA news agency reported. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a moderately conservative cleric, also banned publishing pictures or broadcasting video of executions, the report said. Since the start of this year, Iran has publicly hanged more than 20 people convicted of murder, rape or drug smuggling.

As executioners poked his limbs with an IV needle, Romell Broom initially tried to speed along his own demise, flexing his arm and tugging on a rubber tourniquet to better expose a vein on the inside of his elbow. But as prison workers repeatedly failed to find a vein strong enough to take the lethal injections, the convicted rapist-murderer began to despair over his protracted end. Witnesses and the execution-team log from Tuesday describe how the 53-year-old winced and cried as a shunt inserted in his leg also failed to open a pathway for the fatal drugs.

Nearly 3 1/2 years into a court-ordered suspension of executions, opponents have embraced a new argument: that Californians can't afford to carry out the death penalty in a constitutional manner.

The legal battle over lethal injection, which comes before the U.S. Supreme Court today, has been conducted in unusual secrecy, with courts permitting states across the country to keep from lawyers and the public precisely how death row inmates are executed.

A procession of legal experts declared Thursday that the state's manner of meting out the death penalty had become so bogged down and dogged by inequities that wholesale repair was needed. But during the first of three hearings by a state criminal justice commission there was little agreement on what would constitute the best fix.