The failed lethal injection for Mr. Hamm, who was terminally ill, amounted to what his lawyer said was a case of cruel and unusual punishment.
Doyle Hamm, a convicted murderer who in 2018 became the fourth death row inmate in America to survive a botched execution by lethal injection, died on Sunday in the William C. Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore, in southern Alabama. He was 64. The cause was complications of the lymphoma and cranial cancer for which he had been treated since 2014, said his pro bono lawyer, Bernard E. Harcourt, a Columbia University professor of law and political science. Mr. Hamm was terminally ill when the death sentence was scheduled to be carried out, at 9 p.m. on Feb.22,2018. Doctors had warned that his veins were inaccessible because of his treatment for cancer and hepatitis C as well as for his intravenous drug use. As a result, an execution team struggled for nearly three hours, puncturing him at least 11 times in his legs, ankles and groin and apparently injuring several organs before giving up at 11:27 p.m. because the legal death warrant expired at midnight. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize what we had tonight as a problem,” Jeff Dunn, the Alabama Corrections Commissioner, said in a statement that astounded reporters during a news conference at the time. Correctional officials had been told by a judge that Mr. Hamm’s upper limbs were off limits because his veins were so compromised. Mr. Hamm himself had suggested that the lethal drugs be administered orally. But that would not have been allowed under the state’s execution protocol. Mr. Harcourt filed a civil rights suit describing the bungled attempt as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment and warning that any further attempt by the state would be challenged as subjecting Mr. Hamm to double jeopardy. “This was a bit of butchery that can only be described as torture,” Mr. Harcourt told Roger Cohen, then an opinion columnist for The New York Times, shortly afterward.
