FRANKFORT - There is one school of thought on capital punishment that was not represented during the days of testimony in Franklin County Circuit Court about Kentucky's lethal injection procedures.

Attorneys for two Death Row inmates argued the state uses procedures and drugs that could cause excruciating pain. Attorneys for the Corrections Department defended the protocol, which mimics the lethal injection method used in most other states.

But during the proceedings, which lasted several days strung out over a few weeks, a few members of the audience had a different perspective. They were families of the victims of Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. and Ralph Baze.

"I can tell you that people, normal people who aren't lawyers, are having a hard time understanding what the big deal is about this," said Fayette County Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Larson.

Many people have no sympathy for the condemned and some believe they should suffer just as much as their victims, Larson said.

"They got themselves into this situation and they created a huge amount of pain, to not only the people they killed, but to the survivors of their victims," said Larson, who prosecuted Bowling.

Bowling, 52, shot Eddie and Tina Early in Lexington while sitting in their car before opening their family owned dry cleaning business on the morning of April 9, 1990; their 2-year-old child was wounded. Baze, 49, was convicted of shooting Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and deputy Arthur Briscoe when they attempted to serve an arrest warrant on Jan. 30, 1992.

Yet the constitutions of Kentucky and the United States prohibit cruel punishment and therein lies the dispute.

For a century, Kentucky's electric chair was used for executions. Harold McQueen was the last one put to death by electrocution, just after midnight on July 1, 1997. In 1998, the General Assembly provided lethal injection as an alternative form of execution for those already on Death Row and mandated it for future executions. It also created the sentence of life in prison without parole.

The advocates for lethal injection said it was more humane. Opponents said executions should remain gruesome events to remind the state of its actions.

Eddie Lee Harper's execution in 1999 was the last in Kentucky and the only one using lethal injection.

A new execution chamber has since been built at the Kentucky State Penitentiary near Eddyville, the state's only maximum security prison.

The electric chair remains in its traditional place in cellhouse 13, but would be moved to the new facility if an inmate requests an execution in that manner. It is tested periodically and still works.

Bowling was only days away from his scheduled execution on Nov. 30 when Judge Roger Crittenden issued a stay and agreed to hear the challenge.

When the next execution happens, prison officials will follow essentially the same procedure used to execute Harper, who was strapped onto a gurney and had intravenous lines placed in an arm and a hand - after technicians could not place the second IV line in the other arm.

The first dose of sodium thiopental was introduced into the IV line at 7:16 p.m. The drug is supposed to anesthetize the inmate. A second dose was administered two minutes later.

At 7:19 p.m., pancuronium bromide was injected, a paralyzing agent. Corrections officials say it is to prevent inmates from possibly thrashing about as the third drug is introduced. Potassium chloride stops the heart, but could be painful if the inmate were awake and aware. It was administered to Harper at 7:20 p.m. and again two minutes later.

Dr. William Watson, a pharmacist who examined the readings produced by a heart monitor that was attached to Harper, said the "beginning of dying" actually began five minutes after the first drug was used.

Harper was declared dead at 7:28 p.m., 12 minutes after the first drug.

According to an account from an Associated Press correspondent who witnessed the execution, Harper, "let out a slight puff of air one minute into the procedure but made no further audible sounds. For another minute, his eyes blinked slowly and his toes occasionally wiggled, then he remained motionless until (the warden) declared the execution completed."

The only difference in the drugs used at the next execution will be a higher dose of sodium thiopental. Attorneys for the inmates tried to make the case to Crittenden that Harper and future inmates might not be adequately anesthetized and that the drug can go out of solution if mixed improperly.

Most troubling was the notion that the second drug, the paralyzing agent, might actually mask the fact that an inmate is not anesthetized and is awake and aware during the execution, but unable to move. One witness testified she was awake and in terror, though paralyzed by a drug, during eye surgery.

Dr. Mark Heath, an anesthesiologist who teaches at Columbia University in New York, testified that the combination of a short-acting sleeping drug and the paralyzing drug might produce a patient who is awake and aware, but unable to show it.

"I'm not sure if pain is the right word. It would cause agony," Heath said. "Along with that would be terror."

Perplexing to Crittenden during the proceedings was the apparent lack of thoughtfulness that went into the drug combination at all. The three ingredients were first concocted in Oklahoma in 1977, where prison officials claimed to have consulted with a medical doctor.

But the three drugs were not used until an execution in Texas in 1982 and have simply been adopted by other states that use lethal injection, and even the federal government.

Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who has written extensively on lethal injection, said there is no medical research that she is aware of that has examined the actual drugs used or whether inmates are in pain during the procedure.

Doctors and pharmacists testifying for the inmates said there are alternative drugs that would be less painful and just as lethal.

During the hearings, Assistant Attorney General David Smith said the practice of lethal injection was similar to the intravenous procedures used routinely in medical procedures.

Public defender Susan Balliet said lethal injection brings on a "death that is pure torture."

Smith and Corrections Department attorney Jeff Middendorf, though, argued that the legal challenge is less about science than policy. The target is the death penalty itself.

Middendorf said the entire litigation was designed to sway public opinion on lethal injection and the death penalty and said it was an affront to the victims of the crimes committed by Bowling and Baze.

Both sides spent a bit of time appealing to the emotional side of the argument.

Ted Shouse, one of the public advocates, said the procedures and drug mixture would subject corrections officials to a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge "if they came to put my dog down using the protocol."

Crittenden is expected to rule in the next few weeks, but his decision is almost certainly to be appealed.

And while the case involves a contentious matter of public policy, there are 35 men and one woman in Kentucky who have a special interest. They are the people now on Death Row.

Mark R. Chellgren is the Frankfort, Ky., correspondent for The Associated Press.