A federal appeals court Wednesday stayed the lethal injection of Daniel L. Siebert, whose execution was scheduled for Thursday for several murders in 1986. Following the refusal by the federal district court in Alabama to stay his exectuion, Siebert appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Siebert, who suffers from pancreatic cancer, claimed that the drugs used for lethal injection could negatively interact with his cancer medications to cause unnecessary pain and suffering.
The state argued that Sibert could be executed using a modified procedure, but the modifications did not involve any change to the chemicals or to the sequence in which they are administered. The federal appeals court held that the changes to the protocol were ‘minor’ and stated that the execution shold be postponed until the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of lethal injection.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/10/federal-appeals-court-stays-alabama.php
