The New York Times

Friday, June 9, 2000

Florida Inmate Claims Abuse in Execution

By RICK BRAGG

MIAMI, June 8 -- Florida, which switched to lethal injections after a series of flawed executions in its electric chair, has had trouble with another execution.

Bennie Demps, a three-time convicted killer sentenced to die by lethal injection on Wednesday, was strapped to a gurney for 33 minutes while, he said in his final words, technicians at the Florida State Prison struggled to insert the lethal intravenous drip into a vein.

When the procedure to insert the intravenous drip, which normally takes a few minutes, was completed and the curtain between the execution chamber and witnesses was opened, witnesses said that Mr. Demps pleaded with his lawyer to investigate the way the state's executioners had handled him.

"They butchered me back there," witnesses said Mr. Demps complained from the gurney. "I was in a lot of pain. They cut me in the groin; they cut me in the leg. I was bleeding profusely."

The state went ahead with the execution, its third since shifting from the electric chair in February.

A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, said Mr. Demps was strapped to the gurney for so long because the paperwork was delayed and because the state's technicians had trouble finding a vein for an alternate intravenous drip.

Mr. Demps said the technicians twice sliced painfully into his body, and had stitched up one wound before taking him into the execution chamber.

Prison officials said that the delay was partly because the state was awaiting word from the United States Supreme Court on a last-minute appeal.

But Mr. Demps's lawyer, George F. Schaefer, told The Miami Herald that the court had notified the warden by 5:30 p.m. that it would not act on the case.

Mr. Demps was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.m., his lawyer said in a written statement.

In a letter to State Attorney Rod Smith, Mr. Schaefer called for a formal investigation into the execution, saying that "those complaints of abuse sounded sincere to me."

David Thomas, director of health services for the Florida Department of Corrections, said the state did nothing wrong.

"The protocol used in lethal injection is a flexible document that gives us the professional discretion to locate a suitable vein to inject the chemicals," Mr. Thomas said. "As with other states that use lethal injection, a minor surgical procedure may sometimes be necessary to locate a vein. Such a procedure could take a considerable amount of time.

"In the case of Demps," Mr. Thomas said, "the protocol was complied with, and the execution was carried out in a professional manner. The inmate suffered no undue discomfort."

Mr. Demps had evaded the death penalty once. He was on death row for taking part in two murders in 1971 when the United States Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

In 1976, the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume. Less than two months later, Mr. Demps was sent to death row again after taking part in the killing of an inmate.

Mr. Demps, who held down an inmate while another man stabbed him, said that he was not guilty and that the state had framed him because he had been spared the death penalty in the earlier case.

His execution comes after several flawed electrocutions.

Blood spurted from Allen Lee Davis, a three-time murderer, when he was electrocuted in July.

And inmates caught fire in the electric chair as they were put to death in 1990 and 1997.

Death penalty supporters in the state were afraid that the chair's gruesome history would result in a backlash, in the courts and among the public, and earlier this year the state switched to lethal injection as a means of execution.

But death penalty opponents said the state just seemed to have trouble executing its inmates, no matter how it was done.

"Florida has a remarkable history, in terms of its inability to get its act together as far as killing people," said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. "It sounds like Florida has failed again in terms of carrying out an execution."

"The real problem," Mr. Bright said, "is there is no good or right way of killing people."

The state's history of problems in corrections is not confined to the death chamber. Last year, Frank Valdez, a death row inmate, was beaten to death by prison guards armed with stun guns. Mr. Valdez had murdered a corrections officer 12 years earlier.