U S Federal executions.
The American Federal Bureau of Prisons has a $300,000 lethal injection facility at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. The death house is located inside a non-descript brick building outside the main penitentiary compound, and consists of five viewing rooms surrounding the execution chamber.
The chamber is a stark, hospital-like room lined with green tiles and bare except for the large gurney equipped with five Velcro restraints and a sink in one corner.
The intravenous tubes pass through a small opening in the wall and into the executioner's room nearby. All but one room, the executioner's, are equipped with large two-way windows with curtains. The executioner's room is fitted with one-way glass. During an execution, prison officials will maintain an open telephone line to the Justice Department in Washington. The President has sole authority to grant last-minute clemency. Overhead, a camera linked to a monitor inside the executioner's room will watch the process to note whether the prisoner suffers any pain during the procedure.
On the 11th of June 2001 Timothy McVeigh the Oklahoma City bomber became the first person to be executed under Federal law since 1963. He had placed a bomb outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and injuring 850. The intravenous drip that delivered the lethal chemicals went to a catheter in McVeigh's right leg. The first drug was administered at 8.10 a.m., with the second being given at 8.11 and the final one at 8.13 and he was pronounced dead at 8.14 a.m. On the 19th of June 2001, Juan Raul Garza, a Mexican-American drug lord and murderer was executed on the same gurney.
A prisoner found guilty after 1994 of a federal capital crime (of which there are now over 60) in states that do not allow for lethal injection as a method of execution can't legally be executed in Terre Haute. For those prisoners, the federal government will "contract out" the executions and they will use that state's normal method. Two further executions have been carried out under Federal jurisdiction since.
The American military has also moved to lethal injection (from hanging) and now has a facility in the basement of the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas which is currently housing six or seven inmates.
Typical execution procedure.
Lethal injection protocols vary from state to state.
Typically the prisoner is strapped to a gurney (which is a wheeled hospital style trolley bed) or a fixed execution table rather like an operating theatre table by leather or webbing straps over the body and legs.
Their bare arms are strapped to boards projecting from the sides of the gurney. Trained technicians then insert a 14 gauge catheter (the largest commercially available needle) into a vein in each arm, a process that sounds much simpler than it often is. Once the catheters are in place, they are flushed with 10ml of a Heperin solution, to prevent clots forming inside the catheter, then a 1000 ml bag of saline solution is connected to the catheter ends and the prisoner is either wheeled into the execution chamber or the curtains surrounding it are drawn back to allow the witnesses to see the procedure. When the condemned person has made any final statement, the prison warden gives the signal for the execution to begin and the technician(s), hidden from view behind a two way mirror, begins to manually inject the three chemicals comprising typically 15 - 50 cc of Sodium thiopental, 15 - 50 cc of Pavulon (the generic name for Pancuronium bromide) and 15 - 50 cc of Potassium chloride. There is a short interval between each chemical during which saline solution is injected to clean the IV line and prevent any chemical reaction which could block it. Typically the actual injections will take from three to five minutes to complete.
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