THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501210187
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
If Dana Ray Edmonds is executed as scheduled at 9 p.m. Tuesday, he will be the first condemned inmate to die of lethal injection in Virginia.
He will be put to death with three chemicals: sodium pentothal, Pavulon and potassium chloride, injected into a vein in that order in one-minute intervals.
Under a law that became effective Jan. 1, Edmonds was given a choice: electrocution or lethal injection. He chose injection. If he had not made the choice within 15 days of the execution date, the state would have made the decision for him: lethal injection.
The method of execution was touted by supporters as a more humane way to carry out the death sentence.
Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, introduced the bill after witnessing an execution several years ago and deciding that electrocution is ``a violent, tortuous and, yes, dehumanizing way of carrying out the mandate of the people.''
Some critics of lethal injection argue, however, that the quiet, apparently painless deaths brought on by lethal injections desensitize the public to capital punishment.
Virginia is among 28 states that use lethal injection, which is the most frequently imposed method of execution in the 37 states with a death penalty.
Since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, 127 executions have been carried out by lethal injection in the nation, one more than by all other methods combined, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. MEMO: Main story on page A1.
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT INJECTION by CNB