Executioners’ sanitized reports of deaths by lethal injections in federal cases at odds with witness accounts

What media witnesses described was consistent with pulmonary edema, an expert for inmates’ legal teams, Gail Van Norman, argued in a filing after LeCroy’s execution. She said that as fluid blocks airways, it throws the chest, diaphragm and abdomen off their usual rhythm, “giving the appearance of the chest and abdomen rocking opposite of one another, or a heaving abdomen.”