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Arizona murders another prison inmate.
Thomas Paul West executed by Arizona for killing in 1987 by Michael Kiefer - Jul. 19, 2011 10:14 PM The Arizona Republic FLORENCE - Thomas West went quietly. The convicted killer turned down a last meal Monday night and decided not to pronounce any last words Tuesday morning as he lay strapped to a table in the death chamber at the state prison in Florence. Instead, he sent a message to his attorneys with pre-arranged hand signals and flashed them a peace sign. Then he closed his eyes as the prison warden read the warrant for execution and never opened them again. Lethal chemicals coursed through his veins at 11:01 a.m., and nine minutes later, he was pronounced dead. He was 52. But West had talked plenty last week during a clemency hearing at the Eyman prison in Florence, apologizing to the family of his victim and explaining how he had killed Donald Bortle 24 years ago in Tucson. Relatives, lawyers and psychologists explained that West suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because of physical and sexual abuse as a child. Two of the five members of the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency were moved enough to suggest his death sentence be commuted to life in prison. The other board members prevailed, and West's execution went forward. In July 1987, while visiting Arizona from his native Kankakee, Ill., West burglarized Bortle's trailer because he knew Bortle had TV and stereo equipment. But Bortle surprised him in the act, and West struck out with his fists, knocking Bortle unconscious. West then tied him up and left him on the floor of the trailer. Bortle died of the blows, though West said he did not think he had hit him hard enough to kill him. He was arrested in Illinois, sent to trial and sentenced to death. Over the weekend and into Monday, West's attorneys lobbied the courts, not only on the PTSD matter but claiming that the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections had too much authority in determining how death-row prisoners are put to death. The lawyers cited a last-minute lethal-drug switch 18 hours before a May execution and the department's continued use of catheters that are surgically implanted in a vein in the prisoner's groin to deliver the fatal dose of drugs, when the official execution protocol, hammered out during litigation in 2009, expressly said that the chemicals are supposed to be injected through "peripheral lines," much like a common IV, in an arm, hand or ankle. The femoral line is supposed to be used as a backup when peripheral access is impossible. During a hearing before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, Judge Kim Wardlaw took a Corrections Department attorney to task when he assured her that the protocol would be followed. "The whole problem that's being questioned here is that ADC says that every time, and something else happens," Wardlaw said. The three-judge panel allowed the execution to go forward but with strict orders that the protocol be followed. So on Tuesday, for the first time in six executions, the condemned man was inserted with a catheter in his arm that was uncovered and visible to witnesses. But according to Dale Baich from the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Phoenix, West signaled his attorneys to show that the executioners had inserted the femoral line as well. Corrections officials responded by saying they had a medical need to use a femoral line in all of those executions and did not use two peripheral lines on West because "the left arm vein would not support a peripheral IV." During Monday's hearing before the 9th Circuit, Wardlaw also raised issues about the department's use of a controversial sedative, sodium thiopental, in three of four Arizona executions since October. Defense attorneys maintained that the drug had been illegally obtained from England, and this spring the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confiscated the drug from prisons in several East Coast states. In May, the DEA forbade its use in an Arizona execution. In a May 24 letter to the Arizona Attorney General's Office, Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney General Deborah A. Johnson wrote, "The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has discovered that the Arizona Department of Corrections is presently in possession of sodium thiopental which was imported without compliance with the Controlled Substance Act and, therefore, cannot be used." Nonetheless, on Tuesday, Corrections director Charles Ryan published a letter in The Arizona Republic saying the newspaper was wrong in saying that the drug had been obtained illegally. He called the situation "an error in paperwork (that) does not equate by any means to illegal activity, and the department has acted lawfully in its acquisition of these chemicals." That was not the opinion of the 9th Circuit judges Monday. "We all know . . . the drug was unlawfully obtained," Wardlaw said. "We know that as a historical fact." Even though Wardlaw made her comments on the record in open court, Bill Lamoreaux of the Arizona Department of Corrections said, "Judge Wardlaw's statement is not a representation on behalf of the court and does not suggest wrongful conduct on the part of ADC." |