Texas Must Disclose Source of Execution Drug

Texas must disclose the source of a controversial drug used in capital punishments, according to the state attorney general, in a move that could prompt other states to be more transparent about their drug supplies.

The ruling concerns thiopental sodium, a drug used to render inmates unconscious during lethal injections; a nationwide shortage of the anesthetic has caused delays in capital punishment and has made states search far and wide for backup supplies, including purchasing thiopental made overseas.

Criminal-defense lawyers and advocacy groups have pushed states to divulge the steps they have taken to acquire thiopental, citing concerns that inmates could suffer severe pain during executions if states acquire thiopental overseas that is less effective or powerful than the domestic variety.

Texas and other states, meanwhile, have resisted disclosure, claiming that suppliers could suffer retribution from death-penalty opponents if their identities are disclosed. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, for example, has stated that the debate over the death penalty is similar in its ferocity to the abortion wars and that protests over executions could turn violent.

But the attorney general in Texas, the nation's most active death-penalty state, sided in favor of transparency Thursday, ruling that the state's correctional department must disclose the quantity of execution drugs in its supply and the names of the suppliers. Texas has had 41 executions in the past 2 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Ohio is 2nd with 13 executions.

"This is information the public has a right to know," said Jennifer Moreno, an attorney with a death-penalty legal clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, which had filed a request with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to disclose the information. "We need to know where [thiopental] is coming from to make an assessment about the quality of the drug and whether it will be effective," she said.

The Texas Department of Criminal Journal didn't respond to a request for comment.

Defense lawyers hope other states follow Texas's lead. "Once [thiopental] information is disclosed in one state, it will be harder for other states to keep it secret," said Natasha Minsker, a death-penalty specialist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which filed suit this week to seek disclosure of the source of California's supply of thiopental.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has declined to divulge sourcing information other than to say that it has obtained thiopental lawfully in the U.S. The department declined to discuss the ACLU suit.

A similar disclosure fight is under way in Arizona. The state has disclosed that it obtained thiopental from Britain, but not the supplier.

"To protect our ability to get these drugs, we want to be sure we protect our sources," said a spokeswoman with the Arizona Attorney General's Office, which used imported thiopental to perform the Oct. 26 execution of Jeffrey Landrigan. The U.S. Supreme Court signed off on the state's use of imported thiopental.

"Arizona should follow Texas's lead on this," said Dale Baich, an Arizona federal public defender who represented Mr. Landrigan and is counsel to other death-row inmates in the state. " The lack of transparency by Arizona continues to be troubling and is not good government," he said.

Tennessee, meanwhile, is at the center of a lawsuit pending in London, which alleges that the state has sought to obtain thiopental overseas to carry out the scheduled January execution of inmate Edmund Zagorski.

The London suit, filed by the human-rights group Reprieve and a London law firm, seeks to block U.K. shipments of thiopental to the U.S. on the grounds that the drug will be used for executions, which are banned in Europe.

Tennessee, like other states, has been somewhat circumspect about its efforts to locate a supply of thiopental. "We have looked at a number of different providers of thiopental sodium in the United States, some of which have sources overseas," said Dorinda Carter, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction, who declined to provide other details.

Source: Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2010

Comments

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

Florida | 2-time Jacksonville baby abuser is set for execution

Thirty years ago while on probation for fracturing an infant’s skull, Andrew Lukehart inflicted at least five blows to the head of another baby, then concocted a story that she was abducted before eventually leading authorities to her body in a swamp area. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 2, the 53-year-old from Jacksonville is set to become Florida’s eighth man on death row to be executed in 2026. He will become the 36th under Gov. Ron DeSantis after a record 19 inmates were executed by the state in 2025, including another from Duval County: Michael Bell.

Can the state execute a man who already survived? | Opinion

A second execution would be an unimaginable nightmare for Tony Carruthers and a moral horror for the rest of us. Tony Carruthers is not supposed to be alive . On May 21, Tennessee set out to execute him. It failed. Carruthers survived. He is not the first person to survive an execution in the United States, and he won’t be the last. For Carruthers, the question is: Now what? Will the state seek to arrange a second execution?

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Florida executes Andrew Richard Lukehart

Jacksonville man who killed his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby in 1996 executed 30 years later A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter and throwing her body in a pond 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was scheduled to receive a 3-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Florida | The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars.

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog