Opinion ID: 1912613
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 34

Heading: District Court Found Some Prisoners Would Experience Unnecessary Pain and Torture

Text: The district court's 2005 order in this appeal illuminates an electrocution's gruesome effects and refutes the State's argument that the court found Mata failed to meet his burden of proof. We summarize the important points. The court made six specific findings regarding an electric current's physiological effects on humans. First, high voltage causes intolerable pain sensations by direct excitation of peripheral sensory nerves. Second, electricity causes widespread excitation of brain neurons. Third, applying external electricity to the brain can damage brain neurons by interrupting their natural polarity and lead to the loss of neuron function. The court concluded, however, that the loss of function was most critical in the brain stem because those neurons are the most indispensable to respiration and life. Fourth, high voltage causes intense muscle contractions throughout the body, called muscle tetany. The muscles remain locked in full contraction as long as the current is applied. Fifth, high voltage will not cause fibrillation of the heart. Fibrillation is an arrhythmia in which the heart quivers in a chaotic pattern instead of intermittently contracting. [194] Sixth, current flowing through the body will cause thermal heating, known as joule heating. But it is impossible to predict heating in any particular part of the body because of wide variations in the current flow. The court concluded that it was unknown what path the current would take from the head electrode to the ground electrode on the left leg. It stated that experts sharply disagreed over the mechanism of death in an electrocution. The State's experts believed that electroporation of neurons would cause instantaneous and irreversible loss of brain function. The defense experts believed that the current caused damage to essential organs of the body and that death eventually resulted from the lack of oxygenated blood. The court concluded that the State's theory of instantaneous death assumed a substantial amount of current going to the brain, which was impossible to know. The court observed, [I]f the state's explanation of the logic of the mechanisms of electrocution and its merit as a means of executing the death penalty are true, it is hard to understand why virtually all of the world has abandoned the practice except for Nebraska. The court found that the skull would limit how much current went to the brain. Apart from the current's full power exiting the left leg, the court did not believe the current going to other parts of the body, including the brain, could be determined. Such a determination was difficult because the body is a large mass and humans are not predictable conductors. But because the current would result in the frozen contraction of muscles, it found that a prisoner's heart would be unable to pump blood during the application of current. This would starve the brain and other vital organs of oxygenated blood and cause unconsciousness within 15 to 30 seconds. Nonetheless, the court recognized that hearts frequently restart on their own. It noted that Nebraska's history, and the history of electrocutions overall, showed that one application of current will sometimes not kill a condemned prisoner. Since it is clear that there is still a pulse or breathing in a number of instances ... it seems equally clear that an inmate could revive and regain consciousness after application of current under the 1980s Nebraska protocol and that' some have revived after protocols used in other cases. It found that whether Nebraska's inmates had regained consciousness and experienced unnecessary pain during an electrocution is unknown. It observed that the State will obviously reapply the current until the prisoner is dead but stated that it was impossible to know which prisoners would require a second jolt. Because the current's strength and density in different parts of the body could not be predicted, the court concluded that experts for both sides would sometimes be correct about the mechanism of death. The court summed up its own findings and conclusions as follows: The proposition that judicial electrocutions always result in instantaneous and irreversible brain death with the brain approaching the boiling point is a myth. It is probably the case that some instances of judicial electrocutions do result in instantaneous brain death. It is certainly true that all of them do not. ... Electrocution as a method of executing condemned prisoners is an extremely violent method of accomplishing death. It includes some burning, smoke, and involves extreme contortion of muscles and tissue of almost every part of a person's body. It includes no effort at all to anesthesize the person into unconsciousness before the mechanisms of death are employed. ... The current mode used for an electrocution in Nebraska will result in instantaneous death in some cases, and will almost certainly not result in death at all in some cases. In still others, it will result in a mechanism of death from anoxia with the condemned most likely being unconscious during much of the time it takes to die. It is unknown what the number of cases will be, nor is it possible to, predict which case will have which result. The current mode used for a judicial electrocution is untested .... .... ... [T]here is no question that the Nebraska practice of executing condemned prisoners exclusively by electrocution is unique, outdated, and rejected by virtually Pall the rest of the world; including practices for the euthanasia of non-human animals. There is also no question that its continued use will result in unnecessary pain, suffering, and torture for some, but not all of [the] condemned murderers in this state. Which ones or how many will experience this gruesome form of death and suffer unnecessarily; and which ones will pass with little conscious suffering cannot be known. Contrary to the State's argument, the court did not find that Mata had failed to meet his burden of proof. Nothing in the evidence or the court's order supports the State's argument that electrocution indisputably results in instantaneous death. The experts clearly dispute this contention. Notwithstanding its findings, the court concluded that it was bound by this court's decisions and must overrule Mata's motion to declare electrocution unconstitutional as a matter of law. Yet, it clearly found that some prisoners would remain conscious for 15 to 30 seconds or during the entire application of the current. It further found it was unknown whether the three Nebraska prisoners electrocuted in the 1990's had regained consciousness during the pauses between sequences. But the court found that some prisoners could revive and have revived and regained consciousness under similar protocols and other protocols. The evidence fully supports those findings and undercuts the State's theory of instantaneous death,