Death Penalty News

MEDICAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS are refusing to sell their products for use in lethal injection, The Intercept has learned. The stance could further hinder states’ ability to carry out death sentences at a time when similar restrictions have limited access to drugs. The four companies that have raised objections are Baxter International Inc., B. Braun Medical Inc., Fresenius Kabi, and Johnson & Johnson. In addition to manufacturing drugs, they make IV catheters, syringes, medical tubing, and IV bags, products states rely on to administer lethal injection. In statements to The Intercept, the companies said that the use of their equipment in executions contradicts their values.

Almost a year ago to the day, James Nathan Jones endured the longest execution in US history, causing Alabama to halt the practice Alabama is set to resume its executions with a death row inmate who battered a 75-year-old woman to death with a claw hammer - a year after it halted the punishment as critics say the flawed process is tantamount to torture. Convicted killer James Barber is scheduled to receive a lethal cocktail in an IV by 6am Friday for the 2001 murder of Dorothy Epps. A handyman by trade, he murdered her in cold blood with both fists and a hammer before stealing her purse. 

Labs avoid producing the drugs, leading officials to turn to 'seedy individuals'  In 2018, the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections admitted defeat - he couldn't find any lethal injection drugs.  It had been three years since the last execution in the state, and Joe Allbaugh conceded in a press conference he had been calling 'seedy individuals' from 'all around the world - right down to the backstreets of the Indian subcontinent' - to find the necessary lethal cocktail.  But in detailing his 'mad hunt' to find the drugs, the former FEMA director inadvertently revealed a crisis that had been plaguing America's death row for years.  From basement pharmacies to expired execution drugs and agonizing deaths, an underground system is quietly propping up death rows across the nation. 

With execution drugs in short supply across the nation and increasing secrecy about the companies that provide them, The Texas Tribune is keeping track of movement in the state’s supply. Since 1977, lethal injection has been the method for executing Texas criminals sentenced to death. But the drugs used in executions have changed over the years, as the state has struggled to get a hold of enough life-ending doses. Texas, along with other states that hold executions, has been engaged in a battle for years to keep an adequate inventory of execution drugs. Currently, the state uses only pentobarbital, a sedative it has purchased from compounding pharmacies kept secret from the public. To promote transparency, The Texas Tribune has obtained the inventory history and current supply of execution drugs held by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The information, collected through continuous open records requests, is updated regularly with the available doses and recent changes to the st...

Bills to increase secrecy in the conduct of executions have met different fates in Florida and Idaho. Florida legislators on March 7, 2022 gave final legislative approval to a bill that would conceal the identity of execution participants, including suppliers of execution drugs. Meanwhile, a similar measure in Idaho passed the House of Representatives but failed on a tie vote in a Senate committee on March 9. Supporters of the secrecy bills have asserted, without evidence, that they are necessary to protect drug suppliers from perceived harassment or intimidation. Opponents argue that the secrecy bills are actually designed to prevent drug companies from learning whether their medicines have been obtained in violation of their distribution policies and are being misused to execute prisoners. They also argue that secrecy provisions impair public oversight of death-penalty practices and prevent the public from holding states accountable for botched executions and misconduct in obtaining ...

A recent problematic execution by lethal injection has reignited the debate about the ethics of using medical products to kill. In October, Oklahoma prison inmate John Marion Grant was executed by a lethal injection. Strapped to a gurney, Grant convulsed and vomited – highly unusual for the procedure – after being given midazolam, a sedative and the first of three drugs that are usually administered for lethal injection. Grant was declared unconscious around 15 minutes after receiving the first injection and died roughly six minutes after that. Extreme shortages resulting from the EU’s and pharma companies’ anti-execution moves have seen states seek alternative supplies illicitly from overseas manufacturers , obtain them from less-than-reputable compounding facilities and manufacturers , and experiment with alternative drugs and untested combinations . Now, this botched procedure – Oklahoma’s first lethal injection in six years after a spate of flawed executions in 2014 and 2015 – h...

Less than 3 weeks before the fentanyl made by a company based in London was used to carry out an execution in Nebraska in 2018, its top executive fired off a letter to Gov. Pete Ricketts, Attorney General Doug Peterson and Corrections Director Scott Frakes. The letter was to "remind you again" on Hikma's position on the misuse of their products. "We object in the strongest possible terms to the use of any of our products for the purpose of capital punishment," said Daniel Motto, executive vice president of Hikma/West-Ward Pharmaceuticals. He said it was the company's understanding the Nebraska Department of Corrections may possess fentanyl made by Hikma and it that may be used in a pending execution. He asked for the immediate return of the drugs "unless the State of Nebraska is prepared to provide to us an original raised-seal copy of an affidavit signed by the governor or attorney general certifying it would only be used for patient car...

Like many organizations in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, the board of the American Institute of Architects issued a statement the other day expressing solidarity with protesters — and offering a mea culpa. “We were wrong not to address and work to correct the built world’s role in perpetuating systemic racial injustice,” the statement said. But “we support and are committed to efforts to ensure that our profession is part of the solution.” To that end, the statement added, “we will review our own programs” and “ask our community to join us and hold us accountable.” That’s good to hear. So, for starters, how about stop repeating that it’s OK by you for architects to design death chambers and solitary confinement cells in racially biased prisons that incarcerate and execute an overwhelmingly disproportionate percentage of African-Africans? Several years ago, I wrote about a petition filed with the A.I.A. by an organization called Architects/Planners/Designers for Soc...

With execution drugs in short supply across the nation and increasing secrecy about the companies that provide them, The Texas Tribune is keeping track of movement in the state’s supply. 06 doses expire June 5, 2019 06 doses expire June 27, 2019 15 doses expire Jan. 12, 2020 Scheduled executions - Jul 31 Ruben Gutierrez - Aug 15 Dexter Johnson - Aug 21 Larry Swearingen - Sep 4 Billy Crutsinger - Sep 10 Mark Anthony Soliz - Oct 2 Stephen Barbee Recent inventory changes -1 dose May 1, 2019 Drugs removed from stock +15 doses April 29, 2019 Drugs added to inventory -1 dose April 24, 2019 Execution of John William King Since 1977, lethal injection has been the method for executing Texas criminals sentenced to death. But the drugs used in executions have changed over the years, as the state has struggled to get a hold of enough life-ending doses. Texas, along with other states that hold executions, has been engaged in a battl...

The use of fentanyl in a Nebraska execution and the Catholic Church's recent stand on capital punishment has stirred the debate over the way states execute the condemned. Nebraska authorities used fentanyl to help execute a convicted murderer on August 14. Carey Dean Moore, a 60-year-old inmate who was sentenced to death for killing 2 Omaha cab drivers in 1979, was pronounced dead at 10:47 a.m. at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in what was the nation's 1st execution carried out with the powerful opioid that is at the center of the U.S. overdose epidemic. What impact will the use of the drug in Moore's execution have on lethal-injection drug protocols in other death penalty states, and what are some of the challenges facing judges now that pharmaceutical companies are bringing legal action to prevent their products from being used to carry out executions? Scott Sundby, professor and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami's School of L...