Inmate felt 'extreme' pain during execution, lawyers argue

Lawyers for two soon-to-be executed criminals are arguing that another criminal suffered tremendously during his recent execution by the federal government, citing the results of an autopsy that suggest he may have experienced a drowning sensation while being executed. 

Wesley Purkey was executed on July 16 over the kidnapping and killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998. Purkey became only the second person to be executed by the federal government since 2003; the first, that of murderer Daniel Lee, had occurred just 48 hours earlier.

Filings from lawyers representing two other condemned criminals this week argue that, per the results of an autopsy conducted after his death, Purkey suffered "extreme pain" over the course of that execution. 

The autopsy, which was conducted at the request of Purkey's relatives, allegedly found evidence of both "severe bilateral acute pulmonary edema” and “frothy pulmonary edema in trachea and mainstem bronchi," reportedly caused by the use of the drug pentobarbital. 

Those findings, if true, would suggest that fluid filled Purkey's lungs while he was still alive, causing what the lawyers contend was a "near-drowning" sensation, which is "among the most excruciating feelings known to man," according to one medical expert.

The government in turn argued that the execution was carried out "without any pentobarbital-related complications." 

An Associated Press witness claimed that Purkey did not struggle during the execution, though anti-death-penalty activists claim that pentobarbital can function as such an effective paralytic that inmates are incapable of signaling that they are in pain. 

Lawyers for criminals Lezmond Mitchell and Keith Nelson, both set to be executed later this month, are using the findings to argue for their clients' sentences to be commuted.