28876359 19900818 Expert on execution denied state contract [NORTH SPORTS FINAL, C Edition] Chicago Tribune (pre-1997 Fulltext) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. Chicago, Ill. 5
NEWS
382 State corrections officials have dropped plans to hire the Boston-area inventor of the lethal injection machine as a consultant for the scheduled execution next month of convicted murderer Charles Walker. A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections said Friday that officials decided this week not to offer an $8,200 consulting contract to Fred A. Leuchter Jr., an expert on execution methods who authored a controversial report in 1988 disputing the number of Holocaust victims killed by Nazis during World War II. Leuchter sold a lethal injection machine to Illinois in 1987 for $24,900, after the state's death-penalty statute was altered to provide for execution by injection of lethal drugs. He also was paid $4,181 to install the machine at Stateville penitentiary, near Joliet.