Medical expert warns that pentobarbital injection could cause painful complications for condemned inmate

Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist and intensive-care physician, examined all recent medical examinations of a 50-year-old female death-row inmate. He concluded that the pentobarbital used for execution could produce a painful, brutal death because of the drug’s sedative properties in large doses. The woman’s small vein made proper injection difficult, leading to the drug leaking into muscle tissue, which turned her arm purple and caused serious health complications. Doctors later performed a tracheotomy as she struggled to breathe without mechanical assistance.