NASHVILLE, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Executions in Tennessee remain on hold as a court attempts to determine the best way to conduct the state's lethal-injection procedure, officials say.
Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman ruled last month the three-drug cocktail currently being used might not guarantee a condemned inmate was unconscious from the first drug before the two lethal injections were administered, and ordered all execution be put on hold, including that of convicted murderer and rapist Stephen West, The (Nashville) Tennessean reported Monday.
Bonnyman ordered Ricky Bell -- the warden of Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Institution where West is scheduled to be put to death -- to ensure West is unconscious before allowing the administering of the second two drugs.
The state responded by saying Bell would confirm West's unconscious state by brushing his eyelashes, shaking him and calling his name before proceeding with the execution.
"I feel comfortable that I can do what the court has asked of me," Bell said. "Our staff just adjusts to what we're asked when it comes to the executions. It's something that we do. It's in our mission."
Bonnyman has ordered another hearing with a new issue at the forefront: Is a prison warden, who does not have medical training, qualified to tell whether a person is unconscious?
David Raybin, a Nashville defense lawyer and former prosecutor who helped write the Tennessee death penalty statute in 1976, says the state's solution may not be enough.
"To me, the government should come up with an unquestionably reasonable way of doing this," Raybin said. "I don't understand why it's that difficult."
