South Dakota Governor Orders Stay for Elijah Page

On August 29, four hours before the scheduled execution of 24-year-old Elijah Page, South Dakota Governor Rounds ordered a stay. He had been alerted to a discrepancy between state procedural law on lethal injection and the policy of the Department of Corrections.

Page would have been the first person executed in South Dakota since 1947, and the 8th person to be executed under the age of 25 since the Supreme Court approved the resumption of executions in 1976. Page, who was 18 years old when he committed the brutal murder of Chester Poage on March 13, 2000, chose to waive all appeals in what his defense attorney described as a veiled suicide attempt.

He refused appeals at a time when, nationwide, courts receive challenges that lethal injection violates the 8th amendment. Postmortem examinations indicate that inmates may not always be properly anesthetized, rendering them conscious, but paralyzed, during execution. The paralytic agent administered would render an inmate incapable of expressing the pain of induced cardiac arrest, thus masking the expression of cruel and unusual punishment.

Executions are effectively on hold in California, Delaware, Missouri, New Jersey, and South Dakota because of challenges to the lethal injection process.


Alison, No Death Penalty WI

posted by Sachin @ 1:08 PM