DOVER, Del. - Delaware prison officials botched the execution of a murderer three years ago, attorneys challenging Delaware's use of lethal injection said in court papers filed yesterday.
Attorneys representing Delaware death-row inmates in a class-action lawsuit claim that Brian Steckel was executed in 2005 without the proper anesthesia.
They are seeking to have Delaware's use of lethal injection declared unconstitutional.
Prison officials noticed that the anesthetic being administered to Steckel before he received doses of two lethal chemicals began leaking into tissue surrounding the needle in his arm, the attorneys said.
"Mr. Steckel was administered a paralytic drug and then an extremely painful heart-stopping drug without having received adequate anesthesia," federal public defender Michael Wiseman wrote.
Steckel was sentenced to death in 1997 for the 1994 murder of Sandra Lee Long in her apartment near Wilmington. Long was burned to death in a fire Steckel set after choking her into unconsciousness and raping and sodomizing her.
Steckel's execution was so drawn out that Steckel himself wondered aloud why it was taking so long.
DOC spokesman John Painter refused to respond in detail to the assertions in Wiseman's pretrial brief.