ACLU drops execution challenge

A state Supreme Court case challenging Nevada's use of lethal injection to execute inmates has been voluntarily dropped by the American Civil Liberties Union and the state attorney general's office.

The case involves William Castillo, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the 1995 slaying of a retired Las Vegas school teacher. However, Castillo has an appeal pending in U.S. District Court, and his execution can't be scheduled until the federal appeal is resolved.

Lee Rowland of the ACLU of Nevada said Wednesday that the ACLU decided to drop its state Supreme Court case and the attorney general's office went along with the move.

The state case "no longer serves to benefit" Castillo, Rowland said, adding that the U.S. Supreme Court has "basically blessed" lethal injections as a method of execution and the state Supreme Court likely would agree with the nation's highest court.

The ACLU filed the papers stopping Castillo's execution on Oct. 15, 2007.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that lethal injections, when done properly, don't violated Eighth Amendments protections against cruel and unusual punishment. To stop an injection, the court said defense lawyers must prove "substantial risk of serious harm."

Thirty-five of 36 death penalty states use lethal injection.

Legal fights cover myriad battlefronts - from attacking the medical qualifications of those administering the drugs to questions about whether the chemicals used comply with controlled substances laws.

All lethal injection states use some kind of triple-dose procedure that first delivers an anesthetic to put the inmate to sleep, then a second paralyzing chemical, and a final dose that stops the heart.

The method was developed by an Oklahoma coroner in 1977 and has little changed. It was designed to avoid distasteful deaths associated with electric chairs and gas chambers - executions in which some inmates had been set afire and others choked and convulsed from toxic fumes.

But if anesthesia is not administered correctly, or in a high enough dose, inmates remain awake and able to feel pain as the procedure continues, say inmate attorneys. Paralysis prevents the prisoner from speaking or expressing pain while enduring suffocation and, ultimately, cardiac arrest, they say.