Lethal Injection Lawsuit

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Two Mississippi prisoners condemned to death are challenging the legality of the state’s lethal injection procedures.

A lawyer for Richard Jordan and Ricky Chase writes in a suit filed Thursday in federal court in Jackson that Mississippi prisoners face unacceptably high risks of excruciating pain and torture during an execution.

The lawyer, Jim Craig, has fought the state Corrections Department over information about suppliers of Mississippi’s lethal injection drugs. A prison spokeswoman is declining comment.

The suit asks U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate to void multiple steps of Mississippi’s process. It says there’s no guarantee Mississippi can mix a safe and effective anesthetic to knock prisoners out, and that even if it can, that drug may act to slowly to prevent prisoners from being conscious as they’re executed.