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Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?

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As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

Connecticut Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Prohibit the Production and Manufacturing of Lethal Injection Drugs and Other Materials for Executions

On January 10, 2025, three Connecticut law­mak­ers intro­duced a bill that would make it ille­gal to man­u­fac­ture and sell any drugs or med­ical devices in the state meant to car­ry out the death penal­ty. In 2024, Connecticut-based com­pa­ny Absolute Standards was iden­ti­fied as the source of lethal injec­tion drugs used in 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in 2020 and 2021. In a let­ter to the bill’s spon­sors, John Criscio, President of Absolute Standards, said the com­pa­ny ceased pro­duc­tion of pen­to­bar­bi­tal in December 2020 and does not intend ​“to resume any pro­duc­tion or sale” of the drug.

One of the bill’s co-spon­sors, Senator Ceci Maher told CT Insider that she ​“think[s] this is some­thing we need to do to make sure we here in Connecticut are liv­ing our val­ues, which is that we do not con­done the death penal­ty.” State House Majority Leader Jason Rojas expressed con­cern about the bill, not­ing, ​“I oppose the death penal­ty and wouldn’t be opposed to [ban­ning] the sale or man­u­fac­ture of lethal injec­tion drugs” but nev­er­the­less he wants to exam­ine the bill’s implications.

During the April 7, 2024, episode of ​“Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver focused on the use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal in fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. ​“Our fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have con­tin­ued to pur­sue ques­tion­ably legal and def­i­nite­ly hor­ri­fy­ing ways [of exe­cu­tion],” Mr. Oliver said. Calling the Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion accounts of 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions with pen­to­bar­bi­tal at the end of President Trump’s first term ​“san­i­tized,” Mr. Oliver not­ed autop­sies of two exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als revealed the pris­on­ers’ lungs were ​“twice as heavy as they should be, indi­cat­ing ​‘pul­monary ede­ma,’ where flu­id rush­es into the lungs and air­ways,” caus­ing a drown­ing or suf­fo­cat­ing sen­sa­tion with­out ade­quate anes­theti­za­tion. The U.S. Department of Justice is cur­rent­ly review­ing the appro­pri­ate­ness of using pen­to­bar­bi­tal in exe­cu­tions. Nashville-based fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er Kelley Henry, who is con­sid­er­ing a chal­lenge to Tennessee’s sin­gle drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal pro­to­col notes, ​“We know from the sci­en­tif­ic data that sin­gle drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal results in pul­monary ede­ma which has been likened to waterboarding[.]”

Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sub­mit­ted by jour­nal­ists on Mr. Oliver’s team for its April 2024 report, Last Week Tonight iden­ti­fied Absolute Standards as the firm that pro­vid­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with the pen­to­bar­bi­tal used in the 2020 – 2021 round of fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. The prob­lem, Mr. Oliver alleges, is that while Absolute Standards has been reg­is­tered with Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) since August 2018 to pro­duce pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the drugs pro­duced by the man­u­fac­tur­er are not autho­rized for human con­sump­tion. According to Mr. Oliver, ​“under the law, com­pa­nies that make drugs need to be reg­is­tered with the FDA, and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion claimed, before the exe­cu­tions, that its sup­pli­er was ​‘prop­er­ly reg­is­tered.’” An addi­tion­al FOIA request sub­mit­ted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed that the orga­ni­za­tion was ​“unable to locate and records respon­sive” to the request, and Absolute Standards ​“has not been inspect­ed by the FDA.”

For more than a decade, depart­ments of cor­rec­tions across the United States have had dif­fi­cul­ty acquir­ing some of the drugs tra­di­tion­al­ly used in lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. Many drug man­u­fac­tur­ers have explic­it­ly banned the use of their prod­ucts in exe­cu­tions and oth­ers have stopped pro­duc­ing these drugs com­plete­ly. More than a dozen states have also enact­ed State-by-State Execution Protocols secre­cy statutes intend­ed to pro­tect drug sup­pli­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers from public scrutiny.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, January 13, 2025

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde



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