[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MASS., PENN., VA., GA.

[Rick Halperin]

March 4


TEXAS:

Death penalty opponents take uphill battle to end executions to the Texas 
Capitol



Death row exonerees on Tuesday called for lawmakers to abolish the death 
penalty - a long-shot bid in Texas where capital punishment has broad support.

Death penalty opponents declared it the "Day of Innocence" with about 2 dozen 
exonerees and loved ones of death row inmates lobbying lawmakers to approve 
legislation that would abolish the death penalty and prohibit the law of 
parties from being used in capital cases. The law allows people convicted of 
aiding or abetting in a murder committed by another person to be sentenced to 
death.

"I don't want the state executing people in my name," said Rep. Harold Dutton, 
D-Houston, who has again filed legislation to end the death penalty. "You can 
go all the way through the system and be factually innocent and end up on death 
row, which is evidence by some of the people here. How many people has Texas 
executed who might have been innocent?"

Dutton has attempted to get the bills passed in the Legislature every session 
since 2003. The bills have not made it out of committee.

Support for capital punishment runs deep in the Lone Star State. A 2012 poll 
indicated that more than 70 % of Texans are in favor of the death penalty. The 
state tops the nation in number of executions.

Despite their uphill battle, death penalty opponents said they would visit "as 
many offices as possible" to ask lawmakers to consider a moratorium.

In a news conference, Terri Been tearfully pleaded for her brother, Jeff Wood, 
to be removed from death row.

Wood was convicted under the state's law of parties for a killing committed by 
his partner in a 1996 robbery in Kerrville. According to news reports, Wood 
waited outside of a gas station while Daniel Reneau entered and pointed a 
handgun at the clerk, Kris Keeran. When Keeran did not respond to Reneau's 
request, Reneau shot him.

Wood then entered the store. He stole a surveillance video - his family says he 
was forced by Reneau to take the tape - and fled from the scene with Reneau. 
Wood has said he did not know Reneau would use force, according to reports.

In 2008, Wood, who was found not mentally fit to stand trial, won a stay from a 
federal judge just hours before his scheduled execution. He remains on death 
row.

Been said her brother's proposed execution has caused great anguish for the 
family.

"It's very difficult as a family member to have come that close to your loved 
one being murdered before you," she said.

The bills have not yet been scheduled for a committee hearing.

(source: Dallas Morning News)

***********

Texas Lawmaker Wants State To Kill Death Penalty



On Tuesday, people who once faced a death sentence called on Texas lawmakers to 
end to the state's death penalty.

They were supporting House Bill 1032, proposed by State Representative Harold 
Dutton, which would abolish the death penalty in Texas.

"As a legislator I didn't want to be in the death penalty business," said 
Dutton.

Sabrina Butler spent several years on death row before she was exonerated of 
the murder of her nine-month-old son.

"I don't want anyone to be put in the same position that I was in," said 
Butler.

According to the text, Dutton's bill would end capital punishment and convert 
sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says there are 257 death row offenders 
currently in TDCJ custody. 251 of them are males and there are 6 females.

(source: KEYE TV news)








MASSACHUSEETTS:

Bloodsworth Lecture Illuminates An Innocent Man???s Journey Through Death Row



As students shuffled into Converse Hall's Cole Assembly Room last Wednesday 
night, a gray-haired, casually dressed, beefy, not-quite-6-foot-man with a Van 
Dyke mustache lounged in the front row of the auditorium. The Amherst Political 
Union, who hosted the event, soon introduced the man as Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, 
the 1st American on death row to be exonerated by DNA evidence.

Bloodsworth took the podium, his presence commanding the audience's attention 
and striking each student silent and still in their seats. As he opened his 
mouth to speak, the sound system misbehaved and erupted in an intense, 
theatrical score from an open YouTube tab.

The tension in the room abated and Bloodsworth playfully commented, "Just 
trying to keep things dramatic."

That wasn't going to be hard.

On a hot summer day in August 1984, Bloodsworth, then 22 years old and a former 
Marine, heard a hard knock on his front door. A squadron of police officers 
awaited him on the other side, welcoming him with a slew of words that 
explained his Miranda rights and placed him under arrest for the rape and 
murder of Dawn Hamilton, a 9-year old girl found dead and battered in the woods 
15 days earlier.

"They said to me, 'Kirk Bloodsworth, you're under arrest for the 1st-degree 
murder of Dawn Hamilton, you son-of-a-bitch", he said to the audience.

Although there was no physical evidence against him, and his conviction rested 
entirely upon eyewitness identification, Bloodsworth was eventually convicted 
in 1985 and sentenced to die in Maryland. Once inside the maximum-security 
confines of the Maryland Penitentiary, which looms like a foreboding, medieval 
castle in East Baltimore, Bloodsworth recognized he would probably never see 
the outside world again.

Yet for nearly 9 years of conviction in the state's most brutal prison, 
Bloodsworth relentlessly maintained his innocence while the media and public 
condemned him as a ruthless monster. In his lecture, he held the audience's 
attention with a vivid description of penitentiary life. From stories of fellow 
inmates stabbing their eyes with pencils to the constant slew of licentious 
threats to beatings via chains and Master Locks, his account hammered home the 
horrors and brutalization of prison life. While on death row, Bloodsworth 
worked as the prison librarian, reading everything from "Gestalt psychology to 
Stephen King novels," he said. One day, he came across a book about a man who 
was convicted of murder based on advanced DNA testing.

"I thought to myself, if you could be convicted by DNA testing, why couldn't 
you be exonerated on the same grounds?" Bloodsworth said.

After that realization, Bloodsworth committed himself to establishing his 
innocence via this new technology. Finally, in the summer of 1993, Bloodsworth 
was declared a free man and a sleek limousine arrived outside the penitentiary 
to pilot him home. The Baltimore radio stations played songs in his tribute all 
weekend long. Cigars, beer, crab, and a 3,000 dollar government stipend awaited 
him upon his return. Bloodsworth was a monster no more.

His formal exoneration did not occur until a decade later, when DNA evidence 
came to his aid once again and identified the actual killer in the Hamilton 
case, Kimberly Shay Ruffner. Only weeks after the Hamilton murder, Ruffner had 
been arrested for an unrelated incident that involved a burglary, rape and 
attempted murder. He had been doing his time 1 floor below Bloodsworth at the 
Maryland Penitentiary.

However, even after his release from prison and eventual exoneration, 
Bloodsworth could not shake the circumstances that led to his false conviction. 
He could not adjust back to a society with a justice system so flawed that 
innocent persons found themselves on death row.

"If it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody," he said.

Now 56 years old, Bloodsworth has dedicated his life to eradicating the death 
penalty in America and establishing the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA 
Testing Program, which will help finance the cost of post-conviction DNA 
testing. He works closely with The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic 
revolving around post-conviction DNA testing, and ardent supported of the 
Innocence Protection Act, the 1st federal death penalty reform in be enacted in 
United States criminal law.

When asked by an audience member if he thought Ruffner, Dawn Hamilton???s 
actual killer, should face execution, Bloodsworth remained staunchly anti-death 
penalty. He reasoned, matter how many guilty men deserve to be on death row; 
capital punishment is not worth its inherent risks.

Bloodsworth shared the credo that drives his dedication of ending the death 
penalty: "You can free an innocent man from prison, but you can't free him from 
the grave."

(source: The Amhest Student)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Berks DA, RPD officer's widow speak out against death penalty moratorium



Berks County District Attorney John Adams is among Pennsylvania prosecutors who 
are taking a stand against Gov. Tom Wolf's moratorium on the death penalty.

Wolf said in February that the state's death penalty system is error-prone and 
expensive. He plans to issue reprieves while a legislative panel studies the 
issue.

Adams and many of his colleagues across the state are unhappy with the 
governor's action, and they expressed their displeasure during a Pennsylvania 
District Attorneys Association news conference in the Capitol rotunda in 
Harrisburg on Wednesday.

"I supported the governor in his election, but I'm disappointed that during the 
decision making process on the issue of the death penalty he did not consult 
with district attorneys or consult with the families of victims whose lives 
have been torn apart by the people who have been sentenced to death for their 
actions," said Adams, who served on the governor's corrections transition 
committee.

Also at the news conference was Tricia Wertz, the widow of Reading police Ofc. 
Scott Wertz, who was gunned down in the line of duty in 2006.

"I believe there needs to be some ultimate consequence for their actions and he 
was given that consequence, and I think it should be carried out," Wertz told 
69 News of the 2008 sentence for her husband's convicted killer, Cletus Rivera.

Pa. Rep. Barry Jozwiak, a Berks County Republican and former sheriff, and Pa. 
Rep. Jerry Knowles, a Republican who represents part of Berks County, also 
attended the news conference.

Meantime, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will decide 
whether the moratorium announced in February is legal.

The court's order granted the request by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth 
Williams to review the policy.

The court said it won't expedite the case. The justices want to hear argument 
about whether they should have taken up the matter at all, along with argument 
about how they should rule.

12 people convicted in Berks County, including Cletus Rivera, are among the 183 
men and 3 women who currently sit on Pennsylvania's death row.

(source: WFMZ news)

************************

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to take death penalty moratorium 
case----Philadelphia DA calls governor's actions lawless and unconstitutional



The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to take a case filed by the 
Philadelphia district attorney's office challenging Gov. Tom Wolf's moratorium 
implemented last month on capital punishment in the state.

District Attorney R. Seth Williams asked the court to take up the matter 
involving a defendant named Terrance Williams, who was scheduled for lethal 
injection today.

Although Seth Williams asked that the court take the case on an expedited 
basis, the court refused, and it will be heard on a standard calendar, which 
means that both sides will file briefs and replies over the next several 
months, and oral argument will be scheduled at a date in the future.

It will probably be more than a year before any decision is reached, and 
University of Pittsburgh law professor John Burkoff said it could be even 
longer if the court decides it wants 2 new justices, who will be elected later 
this year, to consider the case as well.

Mr. Wolf announced on Feb. 13 that he was instituting a moratorium on the death 
penalty in Pennsylvania, saying that it was not an "expression of sympathy for 
the guilty on death row, all of whom have been convicted of committing heinous 
crimes." Instead, he continued, it was "based on a flawed system that has been 
proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, 
unjust and expensive."

He cited nationwide statistics that show 150 people have been exonerated from 
death row, including 6 in Pennsylvania.

A bipartisan commission was asked in 2011 to review the effectiveness of 
capital punishment in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Wolf said the moratorium will be in 
place until recommendations and concerns from that are addressed.

Because of the governor's actions, Terrance Williams, who was sentenced to 
death for killing a man with a tire iron on June 11, 1984, received a temporary 
reprieve from his execution warrant, signed by former Gov. Tom Corbett.

But in his filing, Seth Williams argues that Mr. Wolf's action was lawless and 
unconstitutional.

"Merely characterizing conduct by the governor as a reprieve does not make it 
so," the prosecutor???s filing said.

Instead, it continued, "At all times in Pennsylvania history a reprieve has 
meant 1 thing and only 1 thing: a temporary stay of a criminal judgment for a 
defined period of time, for the purpose of allowing the defendant to pursue an 
available legal remedy. The current act of the governor is not a reprieve. Nor, 
indeed, could it be. There is no remaining legal remedy available to defendant. 
He received exhaustive state and federal review. He sought pardon or 
commutation and it was denied. There is nothing legitimate left to pursue and 
no remedy to wait for."

To halt the imposition of the death penalty on a defendant, the district 
attorney's office continued, the sentence must be commuted, which can be done 
only with unanimous agreement by the state Board of Pardons.

Seth Williams accused the governor of usurping judicial function.

But in the governor's response, his attorneys said what he was doing is 
temporary - a reprieve - and requires no input from the Board of Pardons.

"The governor has 'exclusive authority' and 'unfettered discretion to grant a 
reprieve after imposition of sentence and on a case by case basis,'" they 
wrote, quoting an earlier court case.

The response also notes that there is no time limitation included in the 
Constitution for how long a reprieve might last, meaning the governor may issue 
it as he sees fit.

Cameron Kline, a spokesman for the Philadelphia district attorney's office, 
said he was pleased the Supreme Court took the case. Even though no one has 
been executed in Pennsylvania since 1999, Mr. Kline said, it is an important 
question.

???The district attorney has said his job is to enforce the laws on the books 
in Pennsylvania," he said. "Regardless of how infrequently the death penalty is 
used, it is still the law, and that is why he challenged the governor."

Mr. Burkoff said that the full importance of the case - and how the court 
ultimately rules - is probably more for the long term than the short.

"In the long run, it makes a big difference. Governors change. Attitudes 
change."

(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

******************

Pa. High Court Takes Up Gov. Wolf's Death Penalty Moratorium



Pennsylvania's highest court will decide whether Gov. Tom Wolf's moratorium on 
the death penalty is legal.

A Supreme Court order issued Tuesday granted the request by Philadelphia 
District Attorney Seth Williams to review the policy announced by the governor 
last month.

The court says it won't expedite the case. The justices want to hear argument 
about whether they should have taken up the matter at all, along with argument 
about how they should rule.

The case centers on a reprieve issued by Wolf to state prison inmate Terrance 
Williams. He's on death row for the fatal tire-iron beating of a man in 
Philadelphia in 1984.

Wolf says the state's death penalty system is error-prone and expensive. He 
plans to issue reprieves while a legislative panel studies the issue.

(source: Associated Press)

**********************

Gov. Wolf right on death penalty



In my 52 years in Lancaster County, I have seen 1 good governor - the late 
William W. Scranton, who served 1963-67 - and now perhaps the 2nd.

People like to snipe at those who have some power, so it is no surprise that 
our present governor is getting some flack for his action on the death penalty. 
I strongly suspect those who are in favor of the death penalty call themselves 
Christians in spite of the fact the Christian Bible mitigates against it. It 
reminds one of Pharisees. In addition, no evidence exists to support any value 
from it. It demeans all of us as a society. What would Jesus do?

We also ought to be ashamed to have the highest portion of our population of 
any industrialized country on the wrong side of our criminal justice system. We 
would be far better off if we cut our prisoner population at least by half. We 
should get them back to functioning in our society and use the huge costs to 
support our values of education and health care.

Willis Ratzlaff

Conestoga Township

(source: Letter to the Editor, lancasteronline.com)








VIRGINIA:

Diminishing supply of execution drugs puts Virginia in legal limbo ---- 
Supplies of the lethal injection drugs have dried up because the European 
manufacturers have objected to their use in the U.S.



The demise in the General Assembly of a bill that would have kept secret the 
suppliers of death penalty drugs and other details of the lethal injection 
cocktail could lead to a halting of executions in Virginia.

The state's supply of the drugs it uses in executions is set to expire in 
September. But none of the 8 people on death row in Virginia are scheduled to 
die between now and then.

Not having approved up-to-date lethal injection drugs would "raise a lot of 
legal issues as it relates to the carrying out of executions here in Virginia," 
Gov. Terry McAuliffe told reporters Tuesday during a briefing called to 
highlight his administration's accomplishments during the General Assembly 
session.

"I'm not sure where that puts the status here in the commonwealth," the 
governor added. "It does raise serious legal issues."

Death penalty opponents agree. In fact, according to their reading of state 
law, not having the drugs would effectively stop executions in the 
commonwealth. Virginia currently has 2 methods of execution - lethal injection 
and the electric chair.

"The state code says, in effect, that the preferred method of execution is 
lethal injection," said Steve Northrup, executive director of Virginians for 
Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

"An inmate gets a choice, and if an inmate does not choose, he will be executed 
by lethal injection."

Legislation that would have made the electric chair a default execution method 
if lethal injection drugs were not available failed in a Virginia Senate 
committee last year.

Currently, under the statute, Northrup said "the only way the commonwealth 
could use the electric chair to electrocute someone is if the inmate chooses 
it."

The Department of Corrections favored the bill to provide secrecy for lethal 
injection drug manufacturers and the pharmacies that compound them to form the 
execution cocktail. A McAuliffe ally, Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw, 
D-Fairfax County, carried the bill.

Supplies of the drugs have dried up because the European manufacturers have 
objected to their use by the U.S. in executions. Compounding pharmacies have 
balked at producing the concoctions, fearing protests and reprisals from death 
penalty opponents.

The situation has become even more inflamed in light of attempts to use 
different, more readily available combinations of drugs, which have been linked 
to so-called "botched" executions.

McAuliffe opposes the death penalty but will uphold the law that makes 
executions legal in Virginia, said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the governor. 
It's a position similar to that held by former Gov. Tim Kaine, a fellow Roman 
Catholic who opposes the death penalty but did not stop executions from taking 
place during his term.

When asked, McAuliffe said Tuesday he did not actively lobby for the death 
penalty secrecy bill, which drew opposition from an unlikely coalition of 
groups including tea party adherents, the American Civil Liberties Union and 
death penalty opponents.

"I did not lobby - I did not personally make any calls on it at all," he said. 
But that did not keep the governor from making a point, several times, that the 
absence of a way to replenish the state's supply creates legal issues.

(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)








GEORGIA----impending executions postponed

Georgia postpones executions indefinitely so it can examine lethal injection 
drugs



Officials in Georgia announced Tuesday that the state was indefinitely 
suspending executions while it tests the drugs that it had planned to use in an 
execution on Monday night.

The decision came a day after Georgia called off the execution of Kelly Renee 
Gissendaner, the only woman on the state's death row, several hours after it 
was set to take place. This was the 2nd time the state postponed her execution 
in less than a week. Gissendaner, who was convicted of murdering her husband 
nearly 2 decades ago, was originally set to be put to death last week, but 
officials pushed it to Monday due to a winter storm.

On Monday night, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced that it was 
postponing the execution because the lethal injection drug "appeared cloudy." 
After a pharmacist was consulted, the execution was called off, and a new date 
was not announced.

The department said Tuesday it was indefinitely postponing the executions of 
Gissendaner and Brian Keith Terrell, who was scheduled to be executed next 
week, "while an analysis is conducted of the drugs" that were meant to be used 
Monday night.

No new dates were announced for the executions. Instead, the department said 
that when it "is prepared to proceed," sentencing courts will issue new 
execution orders.

This is just the latest issue facing a state that uses lethal injection. In 
recent years, problems with lethal injection drugs have cropped up across the 
country. A shortage of these drugs has caused the dwindling number of states 
still carrying out executions to scramble and improvise.

3 high-profile executions seemed to go awry last year, drawing additional 
scrutiny to this practice. The 3-drug combination that had been typical has 
been replaced by a patchwork system, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a 
case involving lethal injection in the spring after justices questioned one of 
the drugs adopted in recent years by Oklahoma and Florida for executions.

As states have struggled to obtain the necessary drugs, some have also reworked 
their protocols multiple times. Ohio said earlier this year it was delaying all 
executions scheduled in 2015 to allow it to get new lethal injection drugs.

(source: Washington Post)

********************

Death penalty delayed again



Citing concerns about the drug to be used in a lethal injection, corrections 
officials in Georgia postponed the execution of the state's only female death 
row inmate for the 2nd time in a week.

The execution drug was sent to an independent lab to check its potency and the 
test came back at an acceptable level, but during subsequent checks it appeared 
cloudy, Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said. 
Corrections officials called the pharmacist and decided to postpone Kelly Renee 
Gissendaner's Monday night execution "out of an abundance of caution," she 
said. No new date was given.

Gissendaner, 46, was scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. at the prison in 
Jackson for the February 1997 slaying of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner.

Pentobarbital is the only drug used in Georgia executions. For other recent 
executions, the state has gotten the drug from a compounding pharmacy, but 
officials did not immediately respond to an email late Monday asking if that 
was the source in this case. Georgia law prohibits the release of any 
identifying information about the source of execution drugs or any entity 
involved in an execution.

A request for a stay by Gissendaner's lawyers was pending when corrections 
officials decided to postpone the execution. Her lawyers sought a delay until 
the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a case out of Oklahoma. Late Monday, her 
lawyers added additional arguments for the high court: that it should consider 
a stay because Gissendaner didn't kill her husband herself. They also argued 
she had been thoroughly rehabilitated.

Previously, courts had found Gissendaner plotted the stabbing death of her 
husband by her boyfriend, Gregory Owen, who will be up for parole in 8 years 
after accepting a life sentence and testifying against her.

Gissendaner was originally set to die Feb. 25, but corrections officials 
delayed the execution until Monday because of projected winter weather 
conditions.

Gissendaner would have been the 1st woman executed in Georgia in 70 years and 
only the 16th woman put to death nationwide since the Supreme Court allowed the 
death penalty to resume in 1976. About 1,400 men have been executed since then, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity authorized to commute 
a death sentence, denied clemency last week and upheld that decision late 
Monday. Gissendaner's lawyers had urged the board to reconsider and "bestow 
mercy" by commuting her sentence to life without parole.

*****************

Clemency hearing set for Georgia death row inmate canceled after execution 
postponed



The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has canceled a clemency hearing for a 
Georgia man whose scheduled execution date has been postponed.

The board on Tuesday set a March 9 clemency hearing for Brian Keith Terrell and 
then canceled it a few hours later after the Department of Corrections 
postponed Terrell's execution, which had been set for March 10.

Terrell was sentenced to die after he was convicted of beating and shooting to 
death 70-year-old John Watson of Covington in June 1992.

Georgia corrections officials on Monday postponed the execution of Kelly Renee 
Gissendaner at the last minute because of concerns about the lethal injection 
drug, which appeared cloudy. Corrections officials on Tuesday postponed the 
executions of Gissendaner and Terrell pending an analysis of the execution 
drug.

(source for both: Associated Press)

**********************

Documents: Georgia officials indecisive about execution



Georgia officials were indecisive about whether to proceed with a cloudy lethal 
injection drug, at one point saying they weren't sure whether they checked 
"this week's or last week's" batch, according to a court filing.

Ultimately, they postponed the execution of Kelly Renee Gissendaner late Monday 
night. A day later, they decided to temporarily halt executions until they 
could more carefully analyze the pentobarbital, which is supposed to be clear.

The cloudy drug bolstered death penalty opponents, who have been vocal in their 
opposition after three botched executions in other parts of the country.

Gissendaner, who was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her 
husband, had originally been set for execution last week on Feb. 25, but it was 
postponed because of a threat of bad weather.

Attorneys for Gissendaner said in a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court that a 
lawyer for the state called them around 10:25 p.m. Monday to say the execution 
would be postponed several days because the state's pharmacist had looked at 
the drug an hour earlier and determined it was cloudy.

The state's lawyer called back about five minutes later to say the prison 
wasn't sure which drugs they had checked, "this week's or last week's," and 
that they were considering going forward, the filing says.

The lawyer called a 3rd time, saying "this particular batch (of drugs) just 
didn't come out like it was supposed to" and they weren't going to proceed, 
according to the court filing.

About 11 p.m., the state told reporters an independent lab checked its potency 
and it was acceptable, but it later appeared cloudy and the execution was 
postponed "out of an abundance of caution."

The back and forth was detailed in Gissendaner's emergency motion for a stay.

Corrections spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said "there was never any confusion 
within the department about the drugs which were to be used," but also 
indicated the department was not part of the conversations between the attorney 
general's office and defense attorneys.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said in a statement it is "essential that 
executions are carried out in a constitutional manner" and that he approved of 
the decision to temporarily suspend executions.

The cloudiness could be contamination by bacteria or some impurity, said 
Michael Jay, a professor at the University of North Carolina's Eshelman School 
of Pharmacy.

If the particles were big enough, they could clog blood vessels when injected 
or could lodge in the lungs, Jay said. It could also make the drug less potent, 
making an inmate very sleepy but not kill them, he said.

"If it's a solution that's supposed to be clear and it's not clear, it should 
never be injected," Jay said. "So they did the right thing by not injecting 
it."

Compounded drugs have a shelf life of 30 days, Jay said. Corrections officials 
declined to say when the department obtained the drug or when it was set to 
expire.

Georgia and other death penalty states have bought execution drugs from 
compounding pharmacies in recent years after pharmaceutical companies stopped 
selling to U.S. prisons. And many of them have adopted laws to hide the 
identity of their drug providers, saying those laws are necessary to protect 
their suppliers and maintain a source of the drugs. Critics say executions 
should be as transparent as possible.

The cloudy drug "raises significant concerns about Georgia's ability to carry 
out executions in compliance with the Constitution, but we don't know what 
really happened," said Megan McCracken of the University of California, 
Berkeley, School of Law's Death Penalty Clinic.

"Because of the secrecy surrounding Georgia's procedures, it is impossible to 
say if this is indicative of a larger problem," she said.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, 
which tracks data on executions, said he's never heard of an execution being 
halted at the last minute because of a problem with the drug itself.

Missouri and Texas are also actively using compounded pentobarbital in a 
one-drug formula for executions, and South Dakota has also used this method, 
McCracken said.

Other states have been using a 3-drug combination starting with the sedative 
midazolam. But executions in those states are mostly on hold pending a U.S. 
Supreme Court ruling in an Oklahoma case sparked by a botched execution there.

Prosecutors said Gissendaner repeatedly pushed her on-again, off-again lover 
Gregory Owen to kill her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Owen ambushed her 
husband while she went out with friends, forced him to drive to a remote area 
and stabbed him multiple times.

Owen and Gissendaner then met up and set fire to the dead man's car. Both 
initially denied involvement, but Owen eventually confessed and testified 
against his former girlfriend. Owen is serving a life prison sentence and is 
eligible for parole in 8 years.

(source: Yahoo News)