Georgia Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens on Tuesday said the state will begin using only one lethal injection drug — the sedative pentobarbital — instead of three.
An inmate who once bragged about the headlines generated by the carjacking and murder that sent him to death row will be noted in Texas history for a different reason: Yokamon Hearn will be the first prisoner executed under the state's new single-drug procedure.
The Virginia Department of Corrections announced Friday that it would begin using rocuronium bromide due to a nationwide shortage of pancuronium bromide. The latter had been used across the country as step two of a three-drug protocol since shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Both drugs paralyze muscles.
Preston Hughes, who has been on death row for 23 years for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a toddler, is suing the state of Texas over the drug it plans to use to execute him in November, claiming officials are "experimenting" on him and other inmates.
Hughes, 46, is arguing that prison officials, facing a shortage of drugs for the three drug "cocktail" formerly used for lethal injection, did no medical testing before changing the protocol to using a single drug, according to court records.
On July 9, when Texas switched from three drugs to just one to execute its most heinous criminals, Rick Thaler, the state’s No. 3 corrections official, signed off on the change without fanfare after consulting with prison officials in other states.
"We have not changed our current execution protocol and have no immediate plans to do so," Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday, shortly before the state carried out its 12th execution this year. He would not elaborate on how the state will obtain the drug.
Next month the state of Missouri is scheduled to execute convicted murderer Allen Nicklasson by overdosing him with propofol, a German anesthetic. Late last week, the European Union announced that the Missouri execution could trigger export controls on the drug. European Union law prohibits export of products that can be used for capital punishment. If export controls kick in, they could block American hospitals’ ability to purchase propofol, which is used in as many as 80 percent of American medical procedures requiring general anethesia.
Ohio could begin executing inmates with doses of a lethal injection drug prepared by specialized pharmacies under a change in its execution process prompted by difficulties securing the powerful sedative last used by the state
With the supply of a key lethal injection drug all but dried up, Attorney General Jon Bruning said state officials have discussed changing Nebraska's lethal injection protocol to ensure it still has a means to execute convicted murderers.
The nation's most active death-penalty state has turned to a compounding pharmacy to replace its expired execution drugs, according to documents released Wednesday, weeks after Texas prison officials declined to say how they obtained the drugs amid a nationwide shortage.
The appellate judges held that speculating about what the drugs might contain was not enough to buttress a restraining order that would halt the execution.
“There must be some indication in the record that the drug is very likely to cause needless suffering,” the court held.
The judges drew a distinction between the state using a drug that had never been used before, saying in that case the ruling might have been different.
The appellate ruling said: “Plaintiffs argue that because the state has transitioned to using compounding pharmacies, there are known unknowns because of the possibility of contamination. That may be true, but plaintiffs must point to some hypothetical situation, based on science and fact, showing a likelihood of severe pain.”
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Friday halted what was to have been the first U.S. execution to use the popular anesthetic propofol, following threats from the European Union to limit the drug's export if it were used for that purpose.
Tennessee's barely functioning death penalty is on the verge of revival after state officials finally settled on a new lethal injection drug and scheduled a man to die for the first time in more than a year.
