JACKSONVILLE, Fla.-
A condemned man who won a last-minute stay after arguing that the chemicals Florida uses in lethal injections cause excruciating pain was set to be executed Wednesday after his appeals faltered.
Clarence Hill, 48, was scheduled to die at 6 p.m. for the 1982 murder of a Pensacola police officer in a savings and loan robbery.
Hill’s final appeals were before the U.S. Supreme Court, which halted his execution in January after he was strapped to a gurney awaiting his lethal injections.
His defense attorney, D. Todd Doss, filed another appeal and stay request with the high court Monday and was still awaiting a ruling Wednesday. Doss declined to comment.
The high court ruled unanimously in June that Hill could argue the three chemicals used in lethal injections in Florida and many other states–sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride–can cause excruciating pain. The first drug is a painkiller, the second paralyzes the inmate and the third causes a fatal heart attack.
Neither the federal court in Tallahassee nor the Atlanta appeals court have agreed to consider Hill’s challenges to the chemicals. Both have said Hill should have made those arguments years ago, although Doss contends they could not have been made until Gov. Jeb Bush signed the death warrant in November.
Hill, 48, of Mobile, Ala., was convicted of first-degree murder for the Oct. 19, 1982, killing of Taylor, 26, and the wounding of Taylor’s partner, Larry Bailly, when they responded to a silent alarm at Freedom Federal Savings Bank.
The Supreme Court also halted the execution of another Florida inmate who sought to challenge the lethal injection procedure. A new execution date has not been set for Arthur Rutherford, who like Hill had been scheduled to die in January.
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