Edmund Zagorski

Reprieve has successfully  pursued a judicial review in the UK on behalf of Edmund Zagorski. This prisoner  who was set to be executed in Jaunary 11^th 2011 with drugs imported from Britain was granted a stay of execution. 

About the Judicial Review in the British High Court:

The US ran short of Sodium Thiopental, one of the drugs used in the execution protocol in the summer of 2010. As a result, DOCs sought supplies of the drugs from abroad – notably from the UK.

On Monday 25th October 2010, some of these imported British drugs were used to execute Jeffrey Landrigan in Arizona. Shortly after, the American lawyers for death row inmate, Edmund Zagorski, contacted Reprieve with a plea for help: Tennessee was also seeking to purchase British drugs to kill Mr Zagorski, apparently from the same British company.

Reprieve and Leigh Day contacted the Government immediately asking for emergency measures to be taken to avoid British complicity in Mr Zagorski’s execution.

Vince Cable’s office were slow to react, fearing that an order would legitimate drug trade between the US and UK. Not satisfied with this response, Reprieve and lawyers from Leigh Day & Co. filed a judicial review application of the Government’s refusal to lift a hand to prevent British complicity in a series of American executions.

Over the course of the proceedings the Leigh Day lawyers proved to the court that there was no legitimate trade in sodium thiopental between the UK and the US and that therefore any exports would be solely for the purpose of executions.

The following day representatives from Vince Cable’s office (department of Business, Schools and Innovation) announced that the government had changed its position on the issue. The review was suspended and on the 29^th November, 2010, an export ban on sodium thiopental to the US was put in place.

Four months later, as a result of Reprieve’s continued pressure on the Government, further export measures were put on three more execution drugs – pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride and sodium pentobarbital.

Sodium Thiopental

Sodium thiopental is one of cocktail of three drugs prescribed for use in lethal injections by US states which retain the death penalty. Sodium thiopental is supposed to anaesthetise the victim before pancuronium bromide is used to paralyse the victim, and finally potassium chloride is used to induce a heart attack. Sodium thiopental is bona fide anaesthetic and is included in the WHO list of essential medicines.

However, it is old and has largely been superseded by more modern and efficacious drugs in western countries. Its use in the United States, other than for lethal injections, is confined to a few residual specialist areas. The only producer of the drug in the United States, Hospira, had ceased production due to a shortage of raw ingredients. Hospira has also publicly stated that it did not support the use of its product in lethal injections.

About Ed Zagorski:

Edmund George “Ed” Zagorski grew up in very impoverished circumstances in Tecumseh, Michigan. He suffered from a learning disability and a bad stutter as a child, both of which he fought to overcome. He never finished high school, but trained to become a boat captain.

Ed was just 28 when he went to jail in 1983 for the killing of two drug peddlers – John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter -- in a marijuana deal gone bad. By the time he was set to die – on January 11, 2011 – he had been awaiting the death penalty for half of his life. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that forcing a prisoner to wait more than five years for his death is, standing alone, degrading and inhuman punishment.

Ed was convicted and sentenced to death based in part upon statements coerced out of him. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) have described Ed Zagorski’s treatment in the Robertson County jail as “torture”.

Treatment by the Authorities:

Arrested in May of 1983, Mr. Zagorski invoked his rights to remain silent and to counsel. The State of Tennessee then placed Mr. Zagorski in a windowless, unventilated 8′ x 8′ steel box. After fifty two days of near total isolation and sensory deprivation – a period punctuated by an oppressive heat wave – Mr. Zagorski was physiologically compromised and psychologically disturbed. Thirty pounds lighter and despondent, he offered a confession, putting an end to the interminable abuse, in return for the ability to dictate the terms of his execution. As a result of this request to die, the jurors heard nothing in mitigation of his sentence.

According to the police: “he said, well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do—if you’ll let me pick the type of execution and the day of execution, I’ll confess to these murders.” Typically for the unreliable kind of death sentence that often tarnishes the reputation of the U.S. justice system, significant evidence against Ed was supplied by an informant who had bartered for his testimony, who worked closely with the authorities, and who appears to have taken part in planting incriminating evidence against Ed.

Ed has been under a death sentence for almost three decades despite suggestions that other people had the form, and the motive, to commit the murders.

The abuses of his human rights have been ignored by the courts, with the federal appellate courts refusing even to consider most of his claims based on “procedural bars”. The original prosecutors recognized that Ed Zagorski did not merit the death penalty, offering him a sentence of life imprisonment before trial – a sentence that would have allowed him to seek parole in due course.

Ed has been a model prisoner and is well-respected by other inmates and prison personnel. In other words, his execution will be wholly pointless.

Ed’s contact details are: Edmund George Zagorski # 102839, Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Unit 2, 7475 Cockrill Bend Industrial Blvd., Nashville, Tennessee 37209, USA