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| The Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas |
Texas prison officials said they had no plans to change execution procedures after a
bungled Oklahoma execution on Tuesday night, but death penalty opponents said that the incident raises questions about capital punishment in Texas.
The botched procedure in McAlester, Oklahoma, about 340 miles north of the Texas death chamber in Huntsville, won't derail the execution timetable in Texas, the state that executes more people than any other state and many countries, said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Clark added that the execution of Robert James Campbell, convicted in the 1991 abduction and murder of a Houston bank employee, is still scheduled for May 13.
Texas' protocol for executions hasn't led to problems, said Travis Considine, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry.
"Gov. Perry has great confidence in our state's criminal justice system and those responsible for administering executions," Considine said.
Since 2012, Texas has executed convicts condemned to death using a single lethal dose of pentobarbital, Clark said, while Oklahoma was using a new drug combination for the 1st time.
But Texas prison officials have declined to reveal the drug's supplier, despite a state attorney general's office ruling that the information was public. The prison officials argue that similar disclosures have led to threats of violence against companies that sell drugs for use in executions. The threats imperil the continued supply of lethal drugs, they say.
Maurie Levin, a defense lawyer who was involved in the recent legal battles to disclose the compounding pharmacy making Texas' execution drug, said Tuesday's slow death of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma demonstrates the need for greater transparency and broader oversight in Texas.
"There's absolute relevance to Texas," she said. "The problem is lack of accountability."
If Texas prison officials prevail in their quest for secrecy around execution drugs, the state could switch to the same drug mixture used in Oklahoma without the public's knowledge, Levin said.
Source: elpasoinc.com, May 5, 2014
Gov. Rick Perry to President Obama: Leave execution policy to the states
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| Texas Gov. Rick Perry |
Gov. Rick Perry, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, said that the botched execution in Oklahoma is no reason for Texas to rethink its method of execution, and that President Obama's call for national soul-searching on the issue aside, it is an issue best left to the states.
"Here's where the president and I disagree," Perry said. "He all too often, on health care or whether it's on education or whether it's on this question of how states deal with the death penalty, he looks for a one-size-fits-all solution, centric to Washington, D.C., and I would suggest to you that's one of the problems we have in this country. We're a very diverse country and allow the states on these issues that are not addressed directly by the Constitution to come up with the solutions. I think the country would be happier for one thing. I I know the country would be more economically viable."
On Friday, the president said he found the chain of events in the execution earlier in the week of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett "deeply troubling."
"I'll be discussing with (Attorney General) Eric Holder and others to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken not just in this instance, but more broadly in this area," Obama said. "We do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions."
Last Tuesday, the state of Oklahoma sought to execute Lockett with a drug combination the state had not previously used. The injection did not perform as expected, Lockett convulsed violently, eventually dying of an apparent heart attack, 43 minutes after the execution had begun.
David Gregory, the host of Meet the Press, noted that Texas had executed more than 500 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 - more than any other state - and that there were 273 people on death row in the state. He asked Perry whether there was, after what happened in Oklahoma, reason for a pause in executions.
"After what happened in Oklahoma do you expect more challenges?" he asked Perry.
Perry said that there might be a reason for a pause in Oklahoma, but not in Texas.
"State by state those decisions are made about how you're going to punish those who commit the most heinous crimes against your citizens and in Texas, for a substantial long period of time, our citizens have decided, if you kill our children, if you kill our police officers, for those very heinous crimes, that the appropriate penalty is the death penalty," Perry said.
"I think we have an appropriate process in place from the standpoint of the appeals process to make sure due process is addressed and the process of the actual execution I would suggest to you is very different from Oklahoma," Perry said. "We only use 1 drug. But I'm confident that the way the executions are taken care of in the state of Texas are appropriate and humane."
Of what happened in Oklahoma, Perry said, "I don't know whether it was inhumane or not but it was botched," and that Oklahoma officials should examine what happened.
"There's an appropriate way to deal with this and obviously something went terribly wrong," Perry said.
Perry, who was in Washington for Saturday night's White House Correspondents' Dinner as a guest of CNN, was also asked by Gregory about what appears to be his serious interest in making a 2nd run for the presidency in 2016.
Gregory asked how Perry could get a "2nd look" after what Gregory said was generally viewed as a "botched" effort in 2012.
"I would tend to agree with them on the botched effort," Perry said. But, he said, "I think America is a place that believes in 2nd chances. We see more character out of an individual by how you perform after you fail and you go forward."
Source: Austin American-Statesman, May 5, 2014
