Arkansas
Court upholds state’s use of sedative in executions
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Arkansas’ use of the sedative midazolam in its lethal injections.
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court judge’s ruling upholding the state’s execution process. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker in 2020 ruled that the state’s use of midazolam in injections is constitutional and dismissed claims that less painful methods of execution are available.
“With no scientific consensus and a paucity of reliable scientific evidence concerning the effect of large doses of midazolam on humans, the district court did not clearly err in finding that the prisoners failed to demonstrate that the Arkansas execution protocol is sure or very likely to cause severe pain,” the appeals panel said in its ruling.
The ruling comes more than five years since Arkansas raced to execute eight inmates over 11 days before its batch of midazolam expired. The state ultimately put four men to death after courts halted the other four executions.
The state has not executed any inmates since 2017 and doesn’t have any executions scheduled.
The inmates’ case focused on midazolam, which critics have said doesn’t render inmates fully unconscious before other lethal injection drugs are administered. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld midazolam’s use in executions in 2015, but its use still prompts legal challenges.
Critics of midazolam have cited its use in several botched U.S. executions, and Oklahoma put executions on hold in 2015 because of problems. Oklahoma resumed lethal injections last year, and a federal judge in June upheld the state’s execution protocol.
Under Arkansas’ execution process, inmates are first administered midazolam. They’re then administered vecuronium bromide, which stops the lungs, followed by potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Witnesses called by the Arkansas inmates’ attorneys during a 2019 trial before Baker included pharmacologists who said midazolam can start to lose its effectiveness within four to eight minutes of being administered. An anesthesiologist who testified on the state’s behalf, however, described midazolam as an effective sedative.
New Mexico
Cowboys For Trump leader fighting to keep commissioner job
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin is fighting to keep his seat as a New Mexico county commissioner as he faces possible removal and disqualification from public office for his participation in last year’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Griffin was previously convicted of a misdemeanor for entering Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.
Three residents of Santa Fe and Los Alamos counties filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Griffin from being commissioner of Otero County’s 2nd district for the rest of his term.
Griffin, a 47-year-old Republican, is representing himself in the two-day bench trial that began Monday.
“This lawsuit is about removing a duly elected county commissioner from office through the civil court,” Griffin said in court. “By allowing this case to move forward, you’re going to set a very dangerous precedent.”
On the witness stand Monday, Griffin said he went to Washington, D.C. to peacefully protest and pray with other Trump supporters.
“I had no intention of breaking the law on that day,” he said.
The three plaintiffs in the case argued in a 259-page petition that Griffin should be disqualified from holding public office on the basis of a clause in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The amendment holds that anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution be barred from office for engaging in insurrection or rebellion or giving aid or comfort to the nation’s enemies.
Idaho
State leaders OK $321K in transgender-birth certificate case
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho lawmakers who made it more difficult for transgender people to change the sex listed on their birth certificates despite a U.S. court ruling banning such obstacles must pay $321,000 in legal fees to the winning side after losing in the same court.
Republican Gov. Brad Little and Republican Secretary of State Lawerence Denney on the State Board of Examiners on Tuesday approved paying the winning side’s legal fees set by the court in June.
The court in March 2018 banned Idaho from automatically rejecting applications from transgender people to change the sex listed on their birth certificates. The court ruled the restriction violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
But lawmakers in 2020 approved a ban anyway, and Little signed the bill into law. The 2018 case was reopened and Idaho lost again, resulting in the $321,000 legal bill. The state previously paid $75,000 after losing the initial case in 2018.
The plaintiffs in the case were represented by Lambda Legal, which on its website describes itself as a national legal organization working to get full civil rights recognition for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and everyone living with HIV. The plaintiffs sought roughly $450,000, but the court reduced that amount to what it considered reasonable by looking at the case’s complexity and hours billed.
The Board of Examiners typically sends such bills to the Constitutional Defense Council, comprised of the governor, attorney general and leaders of the House and Senate. The council controls the constitutional defense fund that has traditionally gone to pay the winning side’s legal fees when Idaho loses court cases. That fund has paid out more than $3 million.
But the board on Tuesday instead sent the bill to the Legislature. The Legislature isn’t scheduled to meet until January. Meanwhile, the $321,000 is growing at an interest rate of 2.14% until it’s paid, according to a letter from the Idaho attorney general’s office to Brian Benjamin at the state controller’s office.
The Legislature has several potential options for paying the bill, Benjamin said. Lawmakers could send it to the Constitutional Defense Council. There is also the legislative legal defense fund controlled by the leaders of the House and Senate, currently Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke and Republican Senate President Pro-Tem Chuck Winder.
Finally, lawmakers could appropriate the money from some other source.
Regardless, “it’s all taxpayer money,” Benjamin noted.
