SUD CAROLINA, ESEGUITA CONDANNA

 WASHINGTON, 20 MAR - Nel carcere di Columbia, nella Sud Carolina, e' stata eseguita, venerdi' sera, la condanna a morte di un uomo che uccise un poliziotto.

Gli avvocati del condannato, David Clayton Hill, avevano cercato di ottenere in extremis la sospensione dell'esecuzione, sostenendo che il sistema con cui nello Stato viene praticata l'iniezione letale e' crudele.

La loro tesi e' che la procedura della Sud Carolina non metterebbe i condannati al riparo dal provare dolore. Poco prima dell'ora prevista per l'esecuzione, tuttavia, la Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti aveva respinto, con 5 voti a 4, l'istanza dei legali.

Hill era stato condannato per avere ucciso un agente di polizia che l'aveva fermato per controlli lungo la strada: gli sparo' alla testa, dieci anni or sono.

L'uomo ha recitato un passaggio della Bibbia, ha guardato i testimoni e poi ha rivolto lo sguardo verso il soffitto, mentre gli veniva somministrata l'iniezione letale.

La sua morte e' stata dichiarata dopo appena due minuti.

20-MAR-04

SOUTH CAROLINA - Convicted cop killer executed

In Columbia, David Clayton Hill died quietly by lethal injection Friday evening just hours after he lost his final appeal, claiming the way South Carolina puts inmates to death is unusually cruel.

Hill prayed with his minister in the minutes before his death, gave a Bible verse as his final words and looked at the witnesses before turning his gaze upward as the lethal chemicals started. A few blinks, a few gasps and less than 2 minutes later, he was still.

The official time of death was 6:14 p.m.

Hill, 39, was convicted of killing Georgetown Police Maj. Spencer Guerry, who was shot in the head during a traffic stop over an expired license plate 10 years ago. Hill's identification card and registration were found in Guerry's shirt pocket.

Friday's execution ended a 2 week legal drama where Hill's lawyers argued lethal execution was an unusually cruel and painful punishment because South Carolina doesn't sedate its inmates enough to knock them unconscious before administering chemicals to paralyze muscles, stop breathing and stop the heart.

For two weeks, Hill's execution was off after a federal judge granted him a stay. But the state appealed and four hours before he went into the death chamber, the U.S. Supreme Court sealed his fate.

Hill spent his last hours in a tiny cell at the Capital Punishment Facility at Broad River Correctional Institution. Instead of a final meal, the former chef requested a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. "That's contraband, so it was denied," Corrections Department spokesman John Barkley said.

As witnesses filed into the death chamber just before 6 p.m., a minister could barely be heard over the hum of an electric clock. He was praying with Hill, who occasionally murmured back.

Then the curtain was pulled to the side. Hill talked briefly with his minister and lawyer. His final statement of simply "Read Philippians 1: 9-23," was read. The passage discusses the dilemma between living and spreading Jesus Christ's word or dying and being with Him.

Hill then turned toward the witnesses. He smiled at his minister, who had come around from the death chamber and was mouthing the Lord's prayer behind the glass and bars.

The lethal drugs started and Hill turned his gaze upward. He blinked a few times and let 2 puffs of air out of his cheeks. His chest heaved once or twice more and he was still. It took just about 2 minutes, although Hill wasn't pronounced dead for nearly 15 minutes more.

Among the witnesses was Guerry's widow, Sally, who didn't decide whether she was going to watch Hill die until she walked through the door of the witness room.

"I thought of my husband," she said afterward. "I looked at the medicine going in him and I thought of Spencer. How peaceful it was for Mr. Hill and how violent it was for Spencer."

Whether lethal injections are as peaceful and painless as they look or not was at the crux of Hill's final appeals, which were rejected by both the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday. Hill also was denied a reprieve from Gov. Mark Sanford.

Hill's lawyers argued the chemicals South Carolina uses to put inmates to death cause an extreme amount of anguish and are cruel and unusual punishment.

Similar appeals had failed a half-dozen times before at the U.S. Supreme Court, but Hill's chief lawyer, Jerome Nickerson, had said Hill's case is different because he has scientific proof executions don't go off as painlessly as they appear.

3 chemicals are used in the lethal injection. The 1st drug is a sedative that is supposed to knock the prisoner unconscious so he doesn't feel the effects of the 2nd drug, which paralyzes muscles and can stop breathing. The 3rd drug stops the heart.

Hill's lawyers said blood and toxicology evidence from autopsies show about half of the 23 people executed by lethal injection in South Carolina in the past decade may not have had enough sedative in their blood to knock them out before the muscles stop working and suffocates them. And in at least two cases, scientists are almost certain the sedative levels were too low, Nickerson said.

The state attorney general's office answered the claims with a sworn statement from the state toxicologist saying the level of the sedative in the blood can change drastically during the few minutes it takes an inmate to die.

The scientific evidence will likely show up in other appeals for the 70 inmates who remain on South Carolina's death row.

But the cruel punishment argument rings hollow for Georgetown Police Chief Dan Furr, who was hired by Guerry nearly 20 years ago and served under him as a captain when he was killed in March 1994.

"I thought it was a very humane way to die," Furr said.

Hill's brother, Jeff Scott, also was a witness, but didn't talk to reporters afterward.

Hill is the 1st inmate to die in South Carolina since September 2002, when Michael Passaro was put to death for killing his daughter by setting his van on fire in a botched suicide attempt in Myrtle Beach.

On Friday, the state set an April 16 date for its next execution. Former Augusta, Ga., police officer Jerry Bridwell McWee is scheduled to die for shooting Aiken County store clerk John Perry twice in the head during a robbery in July 1991.

Hill becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in South Carolina and the 29th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1985.

Hill becomes the 18th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 903rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.