Press release
State Rep. Jim Neely (R-Cameron) has filed HB 630, which would modify the state’s execution protocol to allow death row inmates to make organ and anatomical donations.
The legislation has a broad coalition of support that includes murder victims’ families and the families of inmates awaiting execution.
“We applaud Rep. Neely’s effort to give these prisoners a chance to save lives,” said Zach Sanders, Executive Director of Missouri Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty. “Death row inmates need more opportunities to show contrition and pay restitution to society.”
In 1996, Sander’s father was murdered by Russell Bucklew, a death row inmate who has been granted several stays of execution due to a rare disease that would complicate the State’s lethal injection protocol.
Last March, while Sanders waited inside Bonne Terre Correctional Facility to witness Bucklew’s most recently-scheduled execution, one correctional officer explained that she would likely have to draw the execution chamber curtains once the tumors in Bucklew’s throat burst and he began choking on his own blood.
“That’s the first time I thought that maybe we’re being a little too gung-ho with the death penalty,” said Sanders, who has since been working to reform Missouri’s capital punishment system. “The thought of a botched execution doesn’t gross me out, especially since Bucklew killed my dad, but making him choke to death on his own blood sounds like something from an ISIS training video.”
That night, the U.S. Supreme Court issued another last-minute stay of execution for Bucklew, and heard oral arguments for Bucklew v. Precythe in November.
Anne Precythe, director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, has argued that the state is not required to provide any alternative method of execution under current law. That’s the same position which was held by former Democrat Governor Jay Nixon and Attorney General Chris Koster, who also worked to kill Bucklew.
One physician who specializes in organ and anatomical donations said Missouri’s existing protocol could work for donations, but a lethal injection procedure specifically designed to maximize organ viability would deliver lethal drugs more directly to the brain, which would also serve to drastically reduce pain and suffering for inmates like Bucklew. For example, injecting a deadly cocktail into the major artery in an inmate’s neck “would work immediately, in less than one second, and very reliably.”
Last year, the Missouri House Committee on Corrections unanimously approved a similar inmate organ donation bill despite concerns about racism raised by Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a liberal organization that was suing Sanders’ organization at the time. In December, a judge dismissed that lawsuit with prejudice.
