Alaskans Against the Death Penalty

Alabama executed Torrey McNabb (pictured) on October 19, amid questions of state interference in the judicial process, resulting in another apparent failure by the drug midazolam to render a prisoner insensate during an execution. Alabama prison officials defended the execution—which took 35 minutes—as conforming with state protocol, most of which has been withheld from the public. Montgomery Advertiser execution witness Brian Lyman reported that at 9:17 p.m., twenty minutes into the execution and after two consciousness checks, "McNabb raised his right arm and rolled his head in a grimace" and then fell "back on the gurney." Associated Press reported that his “family members and attorneys who witnessed the execution expressed repeated concerns to each other that he was still conscious during the lethal injection.” Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn dismissed McNabb's responses as "[i]nvoluntary movement," which he said were not unusual. "I’m confident he was more than unconscious at that point," he said. McNabb had been challenging the state's execution protocol in court for more than a year at the time Alabama issued a warrant for his execution. He had won an appeal permitting his case against the state's use of midazolam to move forward to trial, and the Alabama federal courts had issued an injunction stopping the execution so that judicial review of the state's execution process could take place. However, on October 19, the U.S. Supreme Court, over the dissents of Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, lifted the injunction, vacating the stay and permitting the execution to proceed. Two-and-a-half hours after the execution was scheduled to begin, the Supreme Court denied another last-minute stay application, without dissent, and the execution proceeded. The execution capped a dramatic 48 hours during which Texas courts halted two other executions that had been scheduled for October. On October 18, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had stayed Clinton Young's October 26 execution to permit an evidentiary hearing on his challenge that newly discovered gunshot residue evidence showed that the state's lead witness was the actual killer in his case, and a Texas trial court had stayed the execution of Anthony Shore to investigate allegations that he may have colluded with another death-row prisoner to falsely confess to the murder for which that prisoner had been condemned. McNabb's execution was Alabama's third and the 21st in the United States in 2017.

(B. Lyman, "Torrey McNabb's final words for Alabama before execution: 'I hate you', Montgomery Advertiser," October 19, 2017; K. Chandler, "Torrey Twane McNabb, Alabama Inmate, Defiant Before His Execution," Associated Press, October 19, 2017; All Things Considered, "Alabama Execution Raises Questions About Drug Used In Lethal Injections," NPR, December 9, 2016). See Executions and Lethal Injection.

County Commissioners in Pennington County, South Dakota have approved budget increases of a half-million dollars each for the county's courts and its public defender office for 2018, largely as a result of two high-profile death-penalty prosecutions. Taxpayers will shoulder most of the financial burden resulting from the capital prosecutions of Rapid City defendants Jonathon Klinetobe and Richard Hirth, charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy in the disappearance and death of Klinetobe’s ex-girlfriend, Jessica Rehfeld, in 2015. A third man involved in the alleged plot avoided the death penalty by agreeing to plead guilty and cooperate with the prosecution. In preparation for their trials, the public defender’s office in Pennington County, the state's second most populous, requested a $567,000 increase over and above its current $2.4 million budget. The county courthouse, which pays court-appointed attorneys, requested an increase of $530,000 above its already $1.4 million budget. The county prosecutor's office will also receive a $135,000 increase to its $5.1 million budget. The County Commissioners approved the increases on September 26. Eric Whitcher, director of the Pennington County Public Defender’s Office, said death-penalty cases are “exceedingly expensive” and taxpayers can “reasonably expect” to pay between $500,000 to $1 million in trial-related costs. His June 13 letter to the county auditor’s office stressed that additional funding was essential to cover "substantial expenditures" for expert evaluations, travel expenses, and witness fees. The public defender's office, which represents Klinetobe, is prohibited from representing both defendants, requiring the appointment of private counsel for Hirth. The court has appointed two private lawyers in his case, and Klinetobe is represented by one private lawyer, in addition to two lawyers from the public defender’s office. About $200,000 of the new funding granted to the public defender’s office has been earmarked for Klinetobe’s defense alone. Holli Hennies, county commission office manager, said in June that budget increases would largely be funded from property tax collections. 

South Dakota, which currently has three prisoners on its death row, last carried out an execution in 2012. The last person to receive the death penalty in Pennington County was Briley Piper, who was sentenced to death in 2011.

(T. Tan, "Big boost in funding for death penalty cases," Rapid City Journal, October 15, 2017; T. Tan, "Death penalty cases in Rehfeld murder could prove costly," Rapid City Journal, June 23, 2017.) See Costs and Representation.