Opinion ID: 221564
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Georgia's Lethal Injection Protocol

Text: Georgia law provides that [a]ll persons who have been convicted of a capital offense and have had imposed upon them a sentence of death shall suffer such punishment by lethal injection, which it defines as the continuous intravenous injection of a substance or substances sufficient to cause death into the body of the person sentenced to death until such person is dead. O.C.G.A. § 17-10-38(a) (2000). Under the lethal injection protocol promulgated by the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC), death-sentenced prisoners are administered a succession of three chemicals in the following order: (1) 5,000 milligrams of pentobarbital, an anesthetic that is administered to render the inmate unconscious; (2) 50 milligrams of pancuronium bromide, a paralytic agent; and (3) 120 milliequivalents of potassium chloride, which induces cardiac arrest, causing the inmate's death. The protocol calls for an IV nurse to examine the inmate to ensure he is unconscious before the pancuronium bromide is administered. If the inmate is not unconscious, the protocol requires GDOC staff to repeat the administration of pentobarbital and subsequent consciousness check until the inmate is deemed to be unconscious. Until May 13, 2011, the anesthetic used was sodium thiopental (a/k/a sodium pentothal). Lack of sodium thiopental availability led Georgia on May 13, 2011 to switch to the use of pentobarbital as the anesthetic in its lethal injection protocol.