(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Adapted from Rant of the Week at The Stars Hollow Gazette
A ban on a lethal injection drug has state officials thinking outside of the box for new ways to put people in a box
Ohio Execution Using Untested Drug Cocktail Renews the Debate Over Lethal Injections
By Rick Lyman. The New York Times
Dennis McGuire took 15 minutes to die by lethal injection Thursday morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville for the 1989 rape and murder of a 22-year-old pregnant woman named Joy Stewart.
Eyewitness accounts differ slightly on how much Mr. McGuire, 53, struggled and gasped in those final minutes. But because the execution took unusually long and because Ohio was using a new, untested cocktail of drugs in the procedure, the episode has reignited debate over lethal injection.
States have been scrambling in recent years to come up with a new formula for executions after their stockpiles were depleted or expired when European manufacturers of such previously used drugs as pentobarbital and sodium thiopental stopped selling them for use in executions. No consensus has formed on what available drugs should be used.
Lethal injection drug blocked by judge
from The Guardian
Compounding pharmacy called the Apothecary Shoppe told not to supply Missouri government with unofficial pentobarbital mix
A US federal judge has temporarily blocked an Oklahoma compounding pharmacy from selling a drug to the Missouri department of corrections for use in an upcoming execution.
The restraining order was issued in a lawsuit filed a day earlier in US district court by the Missouri death row inmate Michael Taylor. His attorneys allege that the department contracts with the Apothecary Shoppe to provide the drug set to be used in Taylor’s 26 February lethal injection.
The lawsuit argues that several recent executions involving the drug, compounded pentobarbital, indicate it will likely cause Taylor “severe, unnecessary, lingering and ultimately inhumane pain”.
In his order on Wednesday Judge Terence Kern wrote that Taylor’s attorneys submitted “facts demonstrating that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to plaintiff before defendant can be heard in opposition”.
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