Judge Henry Wingate gave the order verbally on Tuesday in a case that challenges the state’s lethal injection methods as cruel and unusual. He has not yet elaborated on the reasoning behind the order.
The lethal injection chamber at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Miss., in 2002.
Rogelio Solis / ASSOCIATED PRESS
A federal judge has temporarily halted Mississippi from carrying out executions.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate gave the order verbally on Tuesday in response to a suit brought by death row inmates challenging Mississippi's lethal injection methods as cruel and unusual. There was no further written explanation, but Jim Craig, an attorney for one of the inmates on death row, said the judge is expected to give a longer explanation in the coming days.
Mississippi had hoped to execute inmate Richard Jordan on Thursday for a murder as part of a kidnapping in 1976. The state's execution protocol calls for three drugs — a sedative, followed by a paralytic and then a drug to cause cardiac arrest. The protocol is similar to the one approved by the U.S. Supreme Court this year, but inmates counter that the state is lacking safeguards that other states have — such as an EKG to verify the inmate is actually unconscious.
The inmates also say Mississippi is further constrained by state law that mandates executions be performed with an "ultra short-acting barbiturate or other similar drug." In the middle of litigation, the state switched its anesthetic to midazolam, the drug the Supreme Court recently approved. However, it is not a barbiturate.
Mississippi, like many other death penalty states, attempts to keep the supplier of its execution drugs a secret.
Attorney General Jim Hood's office has already appealed the ruling.
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