In what may be unprecedented, perhaps the first obituary of a man deceased on death row by a major national newspaper, the New York Times published a full obituary for Doyle Lee Hamm.

Reporter Sam Roberts of the New York Times noted that “The cause was complications of the lymphoma and cranial cancer for which he had been treated since 2014. Mr. Hamm was terminally ill when the death sentence was scheduled to be carried out, at 9 p.m. on Feb. 22, 2018. Doctors had warned that his veins were inaccessible because of his treatment for cancer and hepatitis C as well as for his intravenous drug use. As a result, an execution team struggled for nearly three hours, puncturing him at least 11 times in his legs, ankles and groin and apparently injuring several organs before giving up at 11:27 p.m. because the legal death warrant expired at midnight.”

The obituary concludes with the words of Mr. Hamm’s long-time attorney: “Doyle Hamm’s case will stand as a tragic illustration of how a government’s uncritical and merciless pursuit of justice can turn a legal system into a form of human sacrifice,” Mr. Harcourt continued, “as Alabama prosecutors and its most august state and federal judges desperately sought to offer up a fragile 61-year-old man dying of cancer to snatch his life before nature — or God — could take its course.”

Read the obituary for Doyle Lee Hamm here. For those without access to the Times,
A permanent accessible link is here.