ATLANTA, GA – A federal judge here last week ruled against a Georgia man on death row, who claimed lethal injection in an execution would cause him agonizing pain, and wanted death by firing squad as an alternative, reported AP News.
Michael Wade Nance argued “because of his medical history an injection of the sedative pentobarbital, the only execution method authorized in the state, could cause him severe pain in violation of his constitutional rights,” AP added.
US District Judge J.P. Boulee ruled Nance did not sufficiently prove that claim and as a result the court didn’t consider the feasibility of a firing squad as an option.
Nance’s lawyer, Anna Arceneaux, failed to comment on this ruling but said she planned to appeal this case, which was originally filed in January of 2020, states AP News.
The lethal injection ruling is for Nance’s conviction and sentence to death after killing Gabor Balogh in 1993, which was in the middle of Nance’s burglary attempt of a Gwinnett County bank, AP clarified.
“His veins are tough to find by sight and those that can be seen are compromised. There is a substantial risk that his veins could ‘blow’ during an execution,” insisted Nance’s lawyers, wrote AP.
In the likelihood that Nance’s veins “blow,” the drug would soak the surrounding tissue and cause an intense pain opposed to the quick and comparatively less painful nature of a firing squad, the defense claimed to AP.
Nance’s lawyers continued to argue his “longtime use of a medication for back pain could make the pentobarbital used in lethal injections ineffective or less effective,” adds AP news, noting
a doctor testified during a May bench trial for the state, and claimed that in the three medical procedures Nance had undergone since the suit, there’d been no issues with the IV.
During Nance’s first argument against local courts, the Judge Boulee ruled he’d taken too long to make these arguments and had failed to show how his constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment would be violated, reports AP News.
AP News also wrote when Nance appealed to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals and challenged this lethal injection, which is the only approved execution method for Georgia, the court ruled he was essentially challenging his death sentence and was not allowed to do so.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Circuit Court’s ruling and Justice Elena Kagan wrote Nance was “not confined to proposing a method authorized by the executing State’s law,” and how a firing squad would not lead to a substantial impediment, according to AP News.
When the case came back to Boulee at a bench trial, he chose not to address the firing squad argument despite hearing helpful testimony on the procedure because Nance still “failed to show that his medical conditions would cause him to suffer severe pain during a lethal injection,” AP reported.
