The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2019 Methods of execution ODIHR’s 2018 Background Paper on the Death Penalty included a detailed analysis of the use of lethal injections as a method of execution and how this can lead to a violation of the prohibition against torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.95 Debates about controversial methods of execution continued in this reporting period. In April 2018, it was reported that one death row inmate’s attorneys had entered into a private settlement with the State of Alabama after his attempted execution on 22 February 2018 was botched using a lethal injection. As a result of the settlement, the state will not set another date for his execution.96 The man suffered from cancer and there was detailed knowledge about how his medical condition would make it difficult for the executioners to get access to his veins to administer the lethal injection. Despite this, the attempt went ahead, leaving the prisoner with “numerous punctures in his legs, feet, and groin that left him severely bruised and in such extreme pain that he began to wish for death.”97 During the reporting period, debate about the use of lethal injection intensified particularly in Tennessee, due to the alleged painful death that could amount to torture caused by the three-drug lethal injection process used there (a combination of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride).98 Following the execution of one man on 9 August 2018, an anaesthesiologist reported that the prisoner was “aware and sensate during his execution and would have experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and the burning sensation caused by the injection of potassium chloride.”99 His application for a stay of execution had been denied a few days prior to his execution, despite a dissenting opinion of United States Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer that emphasised that the execution of this prisoner using this type of lethal injection would inflict 95  “The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area: Background Paper 2018”, op. cit., note 3. 96  “Alabama Agrees Not to Seek Execution of Doyle Hamm After Failed Attempt”, American Bar Association, website, 11 April 2018, <https://www.americanbar.org/groups/committees/death_penalty_representation/project_press/2018/spring/alabama-agrees-not-to-seek-execution-of-doyle-hamm-after-failed-/>. 97  “The Barbarism of Alabama’s Botched Execution of Bernard Harcourt”, The New York Review of Books, 13 March 2018, <www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-barbarism-of-alabamas-botched-execution>. 98  “Tennessee Executes Mentally Ill and Sexually Abused Prisoner by Electrocution”, Death Penalty Information Center, 7 December 2018, <https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/tennessee-executes-mentally-ill-and-sexually-abused-prisoner-by-electrocution>. 99  “Medical Expert: Billy Ray Irick Was Tortured During Execution”, Nashville Scene, 7 September 2018, <https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith-in-the-wind/article/21021361/medical-expert-billy-ray-irick-was-tortured-during-execution>. 26