On this date one year ago, Angel Diaz suffered lethal injection for the 1979 murder of a topless bar manager.
And “suffered” was the word. The procedure was botched, and Diaz took 34 minutes — and a second dose of the lethal three-drug cocktail — before dying, with chemical burns left on both arms.
The incident provoked an immediate media storm and a moratorium on executions in Florida pending the perversity of public servants molding killing procedure by committee. As a result, Diaz remains the last person executed in Florida, and 2007 will be the first year since 1982 that the Sunshine State puts nobody to death.
The debacle in Florida has been a microcosm for the nation. Lethal injection as an execution protocol was by this time last year already facing growing scrutiny. It was immediately apparent that Diaz’s execution could spell serious trouble for the American death penalty’s legal machinery.
And indeed that machinery has now ground to a halt, if only a temporary one. Facing judicial confusion, the Supreme Court is weighing a potential landmark case on the constitutionality of lethal injection, with actual executions — at least involuntary ones — under a de facto moratorium for months yet to come.
That same disquiet is setting down legislative as well as judicial milestones: New Jersey is poised to has this very day become the first American state to abolish the death penalty since 1965.
On this day..
- 1669: Susanna One-Ear
- 1856: Agesilao Milano, near-assassin
- 2009: One stoned and one shot by Islamic militants in Somalia
- 1943: The Massacre of Kalavryta
- Feast Day of St. Lucy
- 1949: John Wilson and Benjamin Roberts, Syd Dernley's first(s)
- 1980: Erdal Eren, leftist student
- 1889: John Gilman, tetchy landlord
- 1861: William Johnson, impulse deserter
- 1828: Manuel Dorrego, Governor of Buenos Aires
- 1532: Solomon Molcho
- 1945: The Belsen war criminals