Yesterday at six o’clock in the evening, Darius Kimbrough was executed by the State of Florida Department of Corrections after being sentenced to death in 1994 for the 1991 murder of Denise Collins of Orlando. Once again, Florida execution practices were hampered regarding the method of execution involving a lethal injection cocktail because Florida no longer has any pentobarbital in its inventory to use in these capital punishments.

And once again, that dilemma has been resolved by the authorities by using midazolam hydrochloride in the lethal injection procedure. Kimbrough is the second man executed in Florida using this drug.

As we’ve posted about before, this drug is not tested. William Happ was the first man to be executed in a process where the new untested drug, midazolam hydrochloride, is injected first as a sedative with two other drugs then being injected into the body to paralyze the person and then stop the heart from beating.

This three drug process took 18 minutes for Darius Kimbrough to die. Was he sedated or was his paralysis preventing him from evidencing pain? We don’t know.

Kimbrough was not part of the ongoing appeal from several Florida Death Row inmates arguing that the use of midazolam hydrochloride is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

He did write a letter to the Florida Supreme Court to voice his concerns about this controversial drug. It didn’t matter.