[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 12



ARKANSAS:

Arkansas judge orders state to disclose source of execution drugs

Arkansas must release information about execution drug supplier to attorneys 
for death row inmates challenging the state's lethal injection drug secrecy law



A judge has ordered Arkansas to release information about its execution drug 
supplier to attorneys for death row inmates who are challenging the state’s 
execution secrecy law.

The order was issued Monday by Pulaski County circuit court judge Wendell 
Griffen. The judge agreed late on Friday to temporarily halt executions for 8 
inmates who were scheduled for lethal injections in the next 4 months.

The Monday ruling orders the state to “identify or otherwise object to 
disclosure” of the manufacturers, distributor, seller or supplier of Arkansas’ 
three lethal injections drugs. The order gives the state until 21 October to 
turn over the package inserts, shipping labels, laboratory test results and 
other information.

Arkansas is among a handful of states with laws that allow prison officials to 
withhold information about execution drugs.

(source: The Guardian)



USA:

What's An Executioner To Do?

The state may accuse the meddling death penalty abolitionists, but it hasn’t 
take any potshots at the large pharmaceutical companies.


Oklahoma inmate Charles Warner, 47, said his “body was on fire” after
executioners used the wrong drug cocktail to execute him, according to
an autopsy report released yesterday by the Oklahoma Office of the
Chief Medical Examiner.

Oklahoma falls again under the searing glare of the national spotlight over 
lack of transparency and shrouding executioner-providers following the 
international spectacle of messed-up executions – now focusing on the 
maladministration of the three-drug series in Warner’s execution of the 
controversial sedative, midazolam, the delivery of a paralytic, and the 
remaining drug supposed to be potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Instead of the required potassium chloride, however, as required by the state’s 
protocol to induce cardiac arrest, the autopsy report prepared a day after 
Warner’s execution reveals that the wrong drug was used to kill Warner.

It was potassium acetate – the same drug at the center of Richard Glossip’s 
eleventh-hour stay last week by Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin.

The confusion appears to have occurred because the syringes were marked as 
potassium chloride but the vials were listed as  “single dose Potassium Acetate 
Injection” which absorbs at a slower rate than the chloride form in the 
potassium pharmacological family.  Nevertheless, the state is obliged to 
investigate the reasons the chemical provider – who remains anonymous – 
supplied the state with potassium acetate instead of the potassium chloride 
mandated by state law.

In any event, Warner was scheduled for execution on the same evening as Clayton 
D. Lockett.

After Lockett’s death, a report found that a phlebotomist failed to properly 
insert an IV line to inject the lethal cocktail of drugs into Lockett’s veins. 
Instead, the misdirected cocktail breached into other tissue and Lockett 
eventually died of cardiac arrest following forty minutes of what appeared to 
be writhing pain.

The state’s mismanaged lethal injection administration has  drawn considerable 
heat due to the state’s pattern and practice of violating their protocols. 
Earlier this year, Akorn Pharmaceuticals wrote in correspondence to Oklahoma 
Attorney General Scott Pruitt that its pharmaceuticals “may have been used by 
some correctional facilities in the United States” and that Akorn “strongly 
objects to the use of its products in capital punishment” and requests their 
products return without further elaboration about their efforts to stop 
executioners from using their products.

In his highly-publicized scheduled time, Glossip, 52, was set to be executed on 
September 30 by lethal injection for his purported role in the 1997 murder of 
an Oklahoma City motel owner.

Glossip’s case has received international attention and the Pope’s request for 
a commuted sentence.

Two hours prior to Glossip’s execution, officials first realized that potassium 
acetate had been delivered rather than potassium chloride.  The Oklahoma Court 
of Criminal Appeals (“OCCA”) on October 2 postponed the three pending 
executions indefinitely at the request of the Attorney General following the 
stay by the governor.

Since the stay, Robert Patton, Oklahoma‘s director of department of 
corrections, claimed that the pharmacy advised that the drugs were the same and 
interchangeable.

Medical advisers distinguish potassium chloride as higher in pH which allows 
easier absorption of the drug into the blood stream and, in turn, is therefore 
far more potent than potassium acetate.

Fallin claims she was unaware that the two drugs had been mixed up in the 
Warner execution and only discovered for the first time the switch in the lead 
up to the Glossip execution.

“The attorney general’s office is conducting an inquiry into the Warner 
execution and I am fully supportive of this inquiry,” Fallin stated. “It is 
imperative that the attorney general obtain the information he needs to make 
sure justice is served competently and fairly.”

Fallin announced that she will delay any execution until she has “complete 
confidence in the system.”

Dale Baich, Glossip’s attorney, cast serious doubt that Oklahoma is capable of 
correcting its repeated breaches of procedure and protocol.

“The State’s disclosure that it used potassium acetate instead of potassium 
chloride during the execution of Charles Warner yet again raises serious 
questions about the ability of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to carry 
out executions,” Baich commented. “The execution logs for Charles Warner say 
that he was administered potassium chloride, but now the State says potassium 
acetate was used. We will explore this in detail through the discovery process 
in the federal litigation.”

Notably, slight variance is permissible in the state’s execution protocol 
involving the use of drugs in executions:

“The protocols include dosage guidelines for single-drug lethal injections of 
pentobarbital or sodium pentothal, along with dosages for a 3-drug protocol of 
midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride,” the AP reported. “The 
protocols also allow for rocuronium or pancuronium bromide to be substituted 
for the 2nd drug. The protocols do not list an alternate for potassium 
chloride, which is the third drug used.”/

“Death Wish” States Trying to Score Drugs

The remaining issues of how and where the states will obtain the necessary 
drugs to carry out executions has required adjusting with new experimental 
combinations of pharmaceuticals from manufacturers who have become increasingly 
wary of death penalty opponents and providing drugs in use for a long time.

As a result, compounding pharmacies have become sought after for states 
scrambling and hard pressed to secure drugs otherwise and know little about 
these compounding operations which receive light FDA oversight and regulation. 
Recognizing that drugs for executions may be unavailable, Oklahoma passed a law 
earlier this month that will allow it to carry out executions with nitrogen 
gas.

Meanwhile, the state may accuse the meddling death penalty abolitionists, but 
it hasn’t take any potshots at the large pharmaceutical companies.

Earlier this year, Politico Magazine reported that the European Union (“E.U.), 
which is America’s fourth largest trading partner, has taken the biggest swipe 
at the state governments’ craven appetite for human destruction:

“The EU disapproves of capital punishment in all circumstances and works toward 
its universal abolition, has banned European companies from exporting drugs if 
they are to be used in executions. Reflecting just how strongly the EU feels 
about capital punishment, the ban is contained in a law regulating trade in all 
goods that ‘could be used for capital punishment, torture or other cruel, 
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’”

Given the EU’s seriousness of purpose, the international organization went 
further to say, “And the list of banned exports includes ‘gallows or 
guillotines;’ electric chairs ‘for the purpose of execution of human beings;’ 
and  ‘air-tight vaults, made of, e.g., steel and glass, designed for the 
execution of human beings by the administration of a lethal chemical 
substance.'”

Bottom line, capital punishment in economic quarters is viewed as bad for 
business, public policy, and international good will – but the state continues 
to make it its business for political capital at the expense of human capital 
and incurring mounting costs in protracted litigation.

As Camus wrote: “We know enough to say that some crimes require severe 
punishment. We do not know enough to say when anyone should die.”

(source: Editorial, Jim Kelly; A New Domain)