Published: June 04, 2008 12:06 am            

Court grants stay of execution for Sonnier

A motion to stay the execution of 40-year-old Derrick Sonnier was granted late Tuesday afternoon by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

According to the court order, the motion was filed by Sonnier’s attorneys on the grounds that the chemicals used according to Texas law during execution by lethal injection would violate his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Michelle Lyons, Texas Department of Criminal Justice public information officer, said the order the court issued did not identify the reasons upon which the stay was granted.

“The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Sonnier a stay of execution, and the stay is indefinite at this time,” Lyons said. “Once a ruling is decided in Sonnier’s case and if the court rules against him, we would proceed accordingly, and the district court he was originally tried in would assign him his third execution date.”

Following the court’s grant of the stay, Sonnier was returned to the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where Lyons said he would be housed on death row until further notice.

Sonnier, who was convicted of the 1991 murders of 27-year-old Melody Flowers and her 2-year-old son Patrick, would have been the first person to be executed in Texas since September 2007.

Lethal injections were temporarily halted in September after the Supreme Court agreed to review a Kentucky case questioning whether or not the method could be more humane.

The April 16 ruling by the court in favor of the method allowed executions to resume across the country, and had Sonnier’s execution been carried out, it would have been the fourth in the country since the temporary halt went into effect.

“At around 4:50 p.m., Walls Unit senior warden Charles O’Reilly informed Sonnier that his stay had been granted,” said Jason Clark, TDCJ spokesman. “Sonnier was very surprised, but he remained quiet and reserved and declined to make a public comment.

“Soon after hearing the news, he called his family and friends to let them know.”

According to Lyons, Sonnier’s attorneys Maurie Levin and David Dow requested a stay because of a case still pending in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals questioning the constitutionality of lethal injection.

The request, filed Tuesday, claimed Sonnier was entitled to a stay “because there was a substantial risk that he would suffer irreparable injury and cruel and unusual punishment if a stay of execution” was denied.

Additionally, Sonnier’s attorneys presented information which indicated that the Texas prison system had adopted changes to its execution protocol which went into effect May 30.

The request included information about revisions made in reference to the training and qualifications of the executioner, and said that the new protocol had not been examined by any court.

According to Lyons, the only changes made to the written protocol — which is not a public document — were revisions to provide more clarity to the protocol already in place.

“The only changes made to the written protocol were revisions to clarify that protocol,” she said. “The chemicals used, the amounts of those chemicals used and the protocol itself remains the same.

“Basically, we put into writing some of the things we were already doing but didn’t have in writing.”

        

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