Opinion ID: 204393
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Other Alleged Inadequacies in the Protocol

Text: Dickens's remaining complaints regarding the adequacy of the Protocol's safeguards are unpersuasive. Dickens argues that Arizona should be required to add three safeguards to the Protocol: a requirement that an MTM have experience monitoring anesthetic depth (the depth of an inmate's unconsciousness following administration of the sodium thiopental); a requirement that all MTMs be screened for medical and psychological problems; and a requirement that at least one MTM have experience placing a percutaneous central line, in case it is necessary to resort to this back-up procedure during an execution. Baze counsels that an inmate cannot succeed on an Eighth Amendment claim simply by showing one more step the State could take as a failsafe for other, independently adequate measures. Baze, 553 U.S. at 60-61, 128 S.Ct. 1520. Where an execution protocol contains sufficient safeguards, the risk of not adopting an additional safeguard is too remote and attenuated to give rise to a substantial risk of serious harm. Id. at 58-59, 128 S.Ct. 1520. The Protocol contains more safeguards than the Kentucky protocol and there is no evidence that Arizona will fail to follow it in future executions. Accordingly, the risk that Dickens will be improperly anesthetized if Arizona fails to adopt the additional safeguards is too remote and attenuated to raise questions of fact as to the Protocol's constitutionality. Id.; see also Harbison, 571 F.3d at 537-38 (failure to require physical consciousness check and evidence of hiring personnel with drug problems and PTSD did not render protocol unconstitutional where there were sufficient safeguards to ensure proper anesthetization); Nooner, 594 F.3d at 604 (requirement that alternative central line be placed by licensed physician was sufficient to address risk that unqualified personnel will place line); Jackson, 594 F.3d at 227 ([B]y speculating about what [the] officials might do in what the record intimates to be the very unlikely hypothetical scenario in which the backup IV line cannot be established, the Plaintiffs have failed to show the degree of imminence Baze requires.). Dickens also challenges the Protocol's failure to provide formal procedures for amendment. If Arizona amends the Protocol to modify the current safeguards, Dickensor another affected death row inmatemay be able to challenge the constitutionality of the amended protocol. The notion that Arizona might adopt and use a new, unconstitutional protocol can only be dismissed as rank speculation.