A botched execution got an Alabama inmate off death row, his attorney revealed. He called the failed lethal injection "torture."
On Feb. 22, the prison medical team attempting to place the lethal IV into Doyle Lee Hamm repeatedly and unsuccessfully punctured his body before calling off the execution, NBC News reported. Hamm had been sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of hotel clerk,
A battle with cancer along with years of drug abuse left the 61-year-old inmate’s veins in bad shape, a condition which his legal team previously warned the state about, saying it would be difficult to deliver the fatal injection to him.
When that proved true last month, Hamm filed a civil rights action for the incident which his attorney, Columbia law professor Bernard Harcourt, called “torture” for the inmate who was hoping for a quick death, NBC said.
On Tuesday, Hamm’s legal team said another execution date would never be set.
“In a private, confidential settlement agreement that I signed with the attorneys from the Alabama Attorney General’s office, we resolved all of our differences and have jointly dismissed all the state and federal litigation in Doyle Hamm’s cases,” Harcourt said, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
The decision comes after Harcourt argued in court that a second execution attempt was in violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
A doctor hired by Harcourt said there were at least 11 puncture wounds inflicted on Hamm’s body and that he was bleeding heavily from the groin area by the time the execution was called off, WHNT-TV reported.
In a statement, Harcourt said Hamm and his family were “extremely relieved” at the settlement, NBC said.
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