Judge: State can execute Brown

The convicted killer's lawyers argued drugs used in lethal injections don't fully sedate the person

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CORRECTION

Reports on the impending execution of Willie Brown Jr., published on April 11, 13 and 18, incorrectly implied the crimes for which he was convicted. Brown was convicted of the murder and armed robbery of a Williamston convenience store clerk.

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After 10 days of uncertainty, a federal judge ruled Monday that North Carolina may execute death row inmate Willie Brown Jr. later this week.

Brown, 61, is scheduled to be executed at 2 a.m. Friday at Raleigh's Central Prison. He was sentenced to death for the March 1983 killing of a Williamston convenience store clerk. Brown had kidnapped Vallerie Roberson Dixon from the store, taken her to a logging road and shot her six times. He got $90 from the cash register.

On April 7, U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard ruled that Brown's execution could only go forward if prison officials made medically trained professionals available to ensure Brown didn't experience a painful execution.

Brown's lawyers had raised concerns that the drugs commonly used in lethal injections across the country didn't fully sedate inmates before they were given paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs, but rather left them awake to experience agonizing deaths. Brown's lawyers said only an anesthesiologist's presence could alleviate their concerns.

A similar legal challenge has stalled executions in California, where a federal judge required an anesthesiologist to be present. But the doctors refused to participate, citing medical ethics.

Prison officials in North Carolina responded to Howard's initial ruling by arranging to have a doctor and nurse evaluate Brown's level of consciousness on a brain wave monitor in a room adjacent to the execution chamber.

Officials also would have execution staff prepared to inject additional sedative if Brown wasn't unconscious based on the machine's readings.

In a seven-page order issued Monday, Howard said he was satisfied with the state's proposal. The judge chastised Brown and his attorneys for trying to create a similar standstill here.

"[Brown] attempts to force a conflict of medical ethics by taking the issue of the positioning of medical professionals in and around the execution chamber, and dressing it in constitutional clothes," Howard wrote.

One of Brown's lawyers, Don Cowan, said they have appealed the ruling to the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va.

Brown's lawyers had argued that a machine was not a replacement for an anesthesiologist, who evaluates the machine's data in conjunction with other information to make sure a patient is sufficiently sedated. They said there was no assurances from the state that the doctor or nurse had been trained on these brain wave monitors.

Keith Acree, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Correction, declined to comment about the ruling.