The state of Florida is scheduled to execute William Happ at 6pm EDT on Tuesday October 15, 2013. Now 51 yearsold, Happ was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the 1986 abduction, rape and murder of a woman named Angie Crowley. The Florida woman's body was discovered near Crystal River in central Florida. Happ's execution is considered by some to be immoral and unorthodox because Florida will be using a drug previously untested for lethal injection. The drug midazolam is normally administered by a doctor for sedation.
In the case of William Happ the drug will be the first of three injected into his system in order to kill him. Happ has decided to stop the appeals process claiming that he is ready and prepared to die. The three drug "lethal injection protocol" administered in the state of Florida is meant to cause unconsciousness, followed by paralysis and then the inmate goes into cardiac arrest which leads to death. In the past Florida has used barbiturate phenobarbital as the first drug in the deadly cocktail used to put inmates to death.
Prisons in many death penalty states, including Florida have begun to run low on phenobarbital. The manufacturer of the drug has banned its use in executions. Now prisons have been forced to change drugs and Happ will be the first Florida inmate to receive midazolam as the first drug in the cocktail. Some have worried that using an untested drug in the administration of a lethal injection drug mixture could result in cruel and unusual punishment. "This is somewhat of an experiment on a living human being," said the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, Richard Dieter to Reuters.
"The three drug process depends on the first drug rendering the inmate unconscious and if he is only partially unconscious, the inmate could be experiencing extreme pain," Dieter continued. "Because the second drug paralyzes him, he would be unable to cry out or show that he is in pain." Reuters reports they tried to get a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections to state how they could assure that midazolam would not cause extreme pain, but she declined to comment.
The spokeswoman did say that Florida prison system "did research and determine that this is the most humane and dignified way to do the procedure." Happ decided to forego the appeals process that has kept him on death row for almost 25 years. In 1986 Angie Crowley was taking a trip through Florida on Memorial Day weekend. She had arranged to meet a friend at a convenience store after becoming lost. The friend was meant to lead Crowley the last few miles of her journey.
Crowley made it to the store but before she could reach the pay phone and call her friend she was grabbed by Happ. The young woman was kidnapped, beaten, raped and strangled by Happ. Crowley's brother Chris, who had helped map out his sister's journey had been petitioning online for the past few years to get Happ's execution moved up and done with. Crowley spoke with the Daily Mail saying, "He killed my sister, he took her life. But when he took that life he created so many other victims. What he did affected everybody. It ate my mother up."
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