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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.
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Woodlands pharmacy that sold compounded pentobarbital to Texas DOC asks for it to be returned

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The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy letter
(click to enlarge)
"My name and the name of my pharmacy are posted all over the internet.” - Jasper Lovoi

By Execution Watch
THE WOODLANDS, Texas - The pharmacy that made a batch of hard-to-get pentobarbital for Texas executioners accused prison officials today of breaking their word to keep the transaction secret and demanded the return of the vials.

"It was my belief that this information would be kept on the 'down low' and that it was unlikely that it would be discovered that my pharmacy provided these drugs," the owner of the pharmacy wrote in a letter to the director of prisons and other state officials.

"I took steps to ensure it would be private,” wrote Jasper Lovoi, owner of The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy. “However, the State of Texas misrepresented this fact, because my name and the name of my pharmacy are posted all over the internet.”

Texas, which uses a deliberate overdose of the anesthetic pentobarbital to kill condemned prisoners in the busiest death chamber in the United States, faced a crisis recently when its supply of the drug expired.

Pressure from international human rights groups has recently prompted manufacturers of pentobarbital and other drugs used in lethal-injection executions to tighten controls over their sale and distribution.

Lovoi was unprepared for the intensity of interest in his pharmacy after prison officials responded to a journalist's formal request for information by revealing his pharmacy’s name.

"Now that the information has been made public, I find myself in the middle of a firestorm that I was not advised of and did not bargain for,” he wrote.

Lovoi asked state officials to contact him at once about returning the vials of pentobarbital for a full refund in an effort to focus attention away from his business.

"I and my staff are very busy operating our pharmacy and do not have the time to deal with the constant inquiries from the press, the hate mail and messages,” he wrote.

Source: Execution Watch, October 5, 2013
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