Death Penalty News

Tennessee will execute Oscar Franklin Smith this week while a lawsuit challenging the state’s new lethal injection protocol makes its way through the court system. There was a possibility of the Thursday execution being called off. Anti-death penalty advocates and attorneys for Smith spent weeks asking Gov. Bill Lee to halt capital punishment until the court ruled whether the protocol is constitutional, which could take until at least January 2026.  On Tuesday morning, Smith’s attorneys announced Lee had denied the reprieve. An anonymous executioner will inject Smith, who was convicted of murdering his wife Judith Smith and her two sons Jason Burnett and Chad Burnett in 1989, with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 10 a.m. He will be the first person in Tennessee put to death using this method.

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

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.

For at least the last six years, the Texas prison system’s method for acquiring pentobarbital – the substance it uses to execute death row inmates – has looked remarkably like a drug deal. That’s the conclusion of death penalty opponents after a report from National Public Radio dropped on July 10. The source of Texas’ execution drugs has long been hidden from the public, but NPR’s Chiara Eisner used state and federal documents and interviews with an anonymous pharmacist to identify the supplier as a San Antonio company that the U.S. Department of Justice alleges has illegally dealt drugs and “fueled and profited from the opioid epidemic.”

A July 10, 2024, National Public Radio (NPR) investigation has revealed that Rite Away, a small chain of pharmacies located around San Antonio and Austin, Texas, compounded and provided pentobarbital for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) between 2019 and late 2023 to carry out lethal injection executions. 

Connecticut-based company Absolute Standards, which was identified as the source of lethal injection drugs used in 13 federal executions in 2020 and 2021, has said it will no longer produce the drug used in executions—pentobarbital. 

The illusion of a humane execution is causing more pain, and wasting taxpayer money. One year ago, on Oct. 28, 2021, John Marion Grant was put to death by lethal injection; specifically, a 3-drug combination of a barbiturate to anesthetize (midazolam), curare to paralyze (vecuronium bromide), and potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest. The constituents of the three-drug cocktail are telling: the midazolam is meant to put the prisoner to sleep, and the paralytic is only used to shield the witnesses from seeing what happens when the victim is injected with the third drug, a profoundly painful poison. Yet, a “botched” execution may occur where an individual drug is improperly compounded or where the needle is not inserted properly in a vein by an incompetent technician. Despite claims of an execution “without complication” by the Department of Corrections spokesman Justin Wolf, witnesses and Grant’s autopsy painted a painful picture of his last moments. Once strapped to the gurney, G...

Concerns about Texas' dwindling lethal injection supplies coupled with questions about the age of the drugs have some advocates wondering whether the state is prepared to humanely carry out its recent uptick in scheduled executions. Texas currently has 8 death dates and 9 doses of its execution drug - compounded sodium pentobarbital - for use in the Huntsville death chamber. What's more, a string of contradictory records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice raises questions about whether some of those doses could be 3 years old, far older than previously reported and old enough that experts worry it could increase the chances of a "torturous" execution. "The older the drug the greater the likelihood of a botched execution. Period," said Maurie Levin, a death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "It becomes contaminated, corrupted, impotent, and all of those things can lead to a torturous execution." ...

A federal review of records related to Nebraska's purchase of lethal injection drugs found "nothing in violation of the law," an official with the Drug Enforcement Administration said late last week. A DEA investigator made a March 19 on-site visit to the Nebraska State Penitentiary, which houses the execution chamber and stores lethal injection drugs. The review of records and drug inventories at the prison took place days after the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska called for an investigation into how state officials obtained the lethal drugs. "Plain and simple, they're in compliance with Drug Enforcement Administration regulations," DEA Special Agent Matthew Barden of Omaha said in a phone interview late Friday afternoon. In a March 12 letter to the DEA, the ACLU questioned whether prison officials had duped authorities into issuing a federal import permit by saying it was intended for a prison pharmacy located 4 miles away from th...

LINCOLN — Nebraska took another step toward bringing back the death penalty Tuesday by seeking an execution date for condemned killer Carey Dean Moore. Attorney General Doug Peterson filed a motion with the Nebraska Supreme Court seeking a death warrant for Moore, 60, the longest-serving inmate on death row. The legal filing says a date of execution must be set no later than 60 days after the court issues a death warrant. The motion also states that Moore has no pending appeals or stays of execution in state or federal courts. In recent months, Moore has declined to be named in a new round of legal challenges filed by death penalty opponents. “The State of Nebraska has a constitutionally acceptable method of carrying out Moore’s death sentences by lethal injection,” said the motion, which was co-filed by State Solicitor General James Smith. Last year, Nebraska prison officials obtained four drugs that they intend to use for the execution. The drug combination has nev...

For years, the state of Nebraska has had a troubled history of cutting corners in its zealous pursuit of lethal-injection drugs to keep its death penalty program alive. In November, the state announced that it would use an experimental drug cocktail not previously used in the United States to carry out its next execution. What the state didn’t reveal, however, is that it was violating federal law when acquiring the ingredients for the lethal cocktail. In a complaint filed today by the ACLU of Nebraska with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the ACLU has shown that the state of Nebraska is playing fast and loose with DEA registrations in order to covertly obtain and store the drugs it intends to use for executing prisoners. The DEA should seize the drugs Nebraska has unlawfully obtained before they can be used in an execution. As the complaint shows, a person or entity, including government agencies, needs a DEA registration to import a controlled substance. Federal law al...

From alleged botched executions in Oklahoma and Alabama to a split decision before the U.S. Supreme Court, a single sedative -- just 1 of the ingredients in a lethal cocktail -- defines much of the recent uncertainty around the American death penalty. Midazolam was first introduced 4 decades ago. It's a common sedative used before minor dental or medical procedures, such as colonoscopies. It's popular and inexpensive - $95 per 10mg wholesale. The World Health Organization lists it as one of the essential drugs needed for a basic health-care system. But in the past four years midazolam also has been used in large doses - 100 mg to 500mg - for the darker and unhealthy purpose. Prison systems in Alabama and at least 5 other states have used it to sedate death row inmates to mask the pain of the drugs they are then given to stop their hearts and breathing. Inmates in Alabama and other states say in lawsuits that midazolam's use amounts to cruel and unusual pu...

Texas prison officials in 2015 arranged to buy lethal-injection drugs from a company in India that was busted for selling psychotropic drugs and opioids illegally to people in Europe and the United States, a new report claims. When that deal fell through, they bought $25,000 worth of execution drugs from another supplier in India, a shipment seized in Houston by U.S. drug enforcers as an illegal importation, according to the report in BuzzFeed News. BuzzFeed, in a detailed story posted late Thursday, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials notified the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Jan. 8, 2015 that they would be importing a large amount of sodium thiopental, Texas' execution drug, as required by a DEA license the agency holds. "TDCJ will be importing Thiopental Sodium in 1 gram vials for a total of 500 to 1,000 grams per purchase/importation," a DEA investigative report published with the article shows. "TDCJ will be importing fr...

California's death chamber On Nov. 6, 2015, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) published proposed regulations for its new single-drug lethal injection protocol. This triggered an important opportunity for the public to comment in accordance with California's Administrative Procedures Act. In order to give the public a chance to provide meaningful comment, the ACLU had previously submitted Public Records Act (PRA) requests to obtain information. The CDCR, however, refused to produce the records, forcing us to go to court. After several extensions and months of withholding the records, the court ruled in March that the CDCR must disclose more than 800 documents (approximately 12,000 pages). The agency still refused and opted to extend the public comment period in order to continue litigating the case. Finally, last week, the CDCR exhausted all legal remedies and was forced to turn documents over.  The documents provide a wealth of ...