[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., FLA., OHIO, MO.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 20



TEXAS:

Decision day for father trying to save son from Texas death penalty



Kent Whitaker, struggling to halt the looming execution of the son who upended 
his life 14 years ago, should know shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday whether his 
efforts have passed the 1st critical hurdle.

Whitaker long ago forgave his son, Thomas Whitaker, for setting up the ambush 
that killed his wife and only other child as they returned to their Sugar Land 
home in December 2013. With Thursday's execution date approaching, Kent 
Whitaker begged the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that his 
son's death sentence be reduced to life in prison.

If a majority of the 7-member board favors clemency, the decision on whether to 
commute the death sentence would be up to Gov. Greg Abbott.

The board will vote around 1 p.m., with out-of-town members faxing their 
ballots in to the parole board's Austin office. Shortly after that, Kent 
Whitaker and his lawyer, Keith Hampton, expect to receive a phone call to learn 
the results.

Thomas Whitaker, now 38, was sentenced to death for luring his family out to 
dinner so an armed friend could await their return home. Shot in the upper 
chest, Kent Whitaker barely survived the ambush, but his wife Tricia and 
youngest child Kevin, a college sophomore, were killed.

In an attempt to deflect blame, the gunman also shot Thomas Whitaker in the 
arm, but police eventually saw through the facade.

The shooter, Chris Brashear, was given a life sentence after pleading guilty to 
murder, while the getaway driver, Steve Champagne, agreed to a 15-year plea 
deal and testified against Whitaker.

Kent Whitaker said his Christian faith allowed him to forgive his son. Now he 
wants the parole board and Abbott to acknowledge that as the crime's chief 
surviving victim, his wishes should be respected and his son's life should be 
spared.

"I have seen too much killing already," Kent Whitaker recently told the 
American-Statesman. "I know Tricia and Kevin would not want him to be executed. 
I can't imagine seeing the last living part of my family executed by the state, 
especially since all the victims didn't want that to happen in the first 
place."

If his efforts fail, Kent Whitaker has promised to be on the other side of the 
death chamber window in Huntsville when his son is administered the fatal dose 
of pentobarbital.

"As he goes to sleep, I want him to be able to look at me and see that I love 
him. I really want him to know that I forgive him, that I love him," he told 
the Statesman. "I don't want to see this. God, I don't want to see this. I've 
seen enough killing. But I can't imagine letting him be in the room by himself 
without anyone there with him."

(source: Austin American-Statesman)

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

Despite Years On Death Row For A Crime He Didn't Commit, Anthony Graves Still 
Has 'Infinite Hope'----Graves was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent 18 
years in prison - much of it in solitary confinement. He talks about the 
experience in his new book.



Anthony Graves spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He talks 
about his experience on death row and in solitary confinement in his book 
Infinite Hope.

Anthony Graves says he never thought much about the death penalty. That is 
until - as he says - the death penalty came knocking at his door and changed 
his life forever.

At age 26, Graves was wrongfully convicted of murdering 6 people. He was 
sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison - much of it in solitary 
confinement. Eventually, he was exonerated and released.

Now, he travels the world talking about criminal justice issues, including the 
horrors of the death penalty and why he believes imprisoning inmates for years 
in solitary confinement is constitutionally unjust.

Graves tells his story in a new book, called Infinite Hope: How Wrongful 
Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My 
Soul.

(source: houstonpublicmedia.org)








DELAWARE:

Delaware law is overturned, yet 2 remain on death row



2 men remain on death row a year and a half after the state Supreme Court ruled 
Delaware's death penalty unconstitutional.

Michael R. Manley and David D. Stevenson have been fighting their convictions 
since being sentenced 20 years ago. Ironically, those decades-long battles are 
what is keeping them on death row.

"It's routine," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

That's because what typically occurs when the state or U.S. Supreme Court 
declares a law unconstitutional is if the case is pending on appeal it will be 
modified the next time it comes to the sentencing court.

For example, when Ohio's death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1978 
there were 54 cases pending in the that state's Supreme Court, Dunham said. As 
a result, all of those were immediately resentenced to life in prison. But 
there were another 50 in the appellant process. Those cases took longer to 
resentence.

Ohio has since reinstated its death penalty.

The same is being seen in Connecticut where its Supreme Court ruled the state's 
death penalty unconstitutional in 2015.

"The Connecticut Supreme Court was still deciding issues in its death penalty 
cases as recently as last month," Dunham said.

While some might think it's a waste of time to wait to modify the sentence, 
Dunham explained the appeals are not always challenges to the death penalty. In 
some cases, prisoners are challenging their convictions.

"They may not be guilty of first-degree murder and they were wrongly sentenced 
to death, so this would take the death penalty off the table but it doesn't 
affect the fairness of their underlying conviction," Dunham said.

He pointed to Jermaine Wright who spent more than 20 years on death row before 
a Delaware court, in 2012, overturned his conviction and death sentence on the 
premise he wasn't properly advised of his rights during the police 
interrogation - a nearly 13-hour event in which Wright provided a confession 
while high on heroin.

Wright, in 2016, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and was sentenced 
to time served.

(source: News Journal)








FLORIDA:

Rubio says he believes alleged Florida shooter should be executed



Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he believes the person who opened fire last week 
at a Florida high school should be executed.

During an interview with CBS Miami, Rubio was asked whether he believes Nikolas 
Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, should get 
the death penalty.

"The answer is yes," Rubio said.

But he added it's a tough question to answer because he has larger concerns 
about the death penalty.

"Not in a case like this, I have concerns in the broader sense about how not 
everyone gets equal representation in death panels," he said.

"But in this particular case, it'd be hard to argue against the death penalty."

His comments come after Cruz last week allegedly opened fire at a Florida high 
school, killing 17 people and wounding 14 more.

The FBI has faced scrutiny over its handling of Cruz.

A person close to Cruz called the FBI's public tipline in January and raised 
concerns about a possible school shooting, citing Cruz's gun ownership and 
desire to kill.

But the FBI never reported the tip to its Miami field office or investigated 
the claim.

President Trump ripped the FBI in a tweet over the weekend, suggesting the 
bureau could have stopped Cruz if it spent less time working on the Russia 
probe.

(source: thehill.com)








OHIO:

Attorney General appealing decision to keep Warren child killer off death 
row----Danny Lee Hill's attorneys say he is mentally deficient and should not 
have gotten the death penalty



Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is appealing a decision by the U.S. Sixth 
District Court of Appeals that would keep a man convicted in the brutal murder 
and sexual assault of a child off of death row.

The Attorney General's Office filed the appeal Friday, seeking a review of the 
ruling by the 3-judge panel that determined that Danny Lee Hill was too 
mentally deficient to face the death penalty.

Raymond Fife was 12 years old when he was killed in Warren. His mother last saw 
him alive on Sept. 10, 1985 when he left on his bike and headed to a Boy Scout 
meeting.

Prosecutors and police say Danny Lee Hill, who was 18 at the time, and Timothy 
Combs, who was 17, attacked, raped, tortured and murdered Fife.

Both were convicted of aggravated murder and several other charges. Since Combs 
was a juvenile he was sentenced to life in prison. Hill was sent to death row.

Hill's attorneys, however, have filed numerous motions saying his IQ is low and 
he is too intellectually disabled to be executed. A federal appeals court 
agreed with them earlier this month.

DeWine claims the judges disregarded important testimony about Hill's 
intellectual ability. Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said that not 
enough credit was given to witnesses, including mental health experts, who 
determined Hill was not disabled. One witness testified that a person who IS 
mentally disabled would not call a press conference, as Hill did.

(source: WKBN news)

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

Death penalty is not justice, it's vengeance



On Feb. 14, The Enquirer ran a story asking, "Why is a murder trial here so 
much more likely to end with a death sentence?" The article recited statistics 
showing that the death row population from Hamilton County murder convictions 
is the highest in Ohio, and among the highest on a per capita basis in the 
entire United States. And it points out the particular case of Raymond 
Tibbetts, whose crime truly was an example of the kind that Hamilton County 
prosecutor describes as "so hideous" and "evil" that they deserve the death 
penalty. But while such a case might seem to cry for capital punishment, is 
imposing it really necessary to do justice and to protect society? Principles 
of Catholic theology suggest that the answer is no.

Of course, legislators, prosecutors, juries, and judges are not bound by 
Catholic theology. But the rationale for the Church's prudential judgment about 
capital punishment is instructive for people of any or no faith, rooted as it 
is in 2 principles of what is known as Catholic Social Doctrine: the dignity of 
all human people, and the protection of the common good.

It cannot be denied that the crimes of Tibbetts and others on death row are 
cruel, violent and hideous. No theory of punishment should attempt to minimize 
either the viciousness of the crime or the devastating effect on the families 
and friends of the victims. I cannot imagine the horror, and will not pretend 
that I can put myself in the place of those who suffer from, or because of, 
these horrible deeds. But no crime, or series of crimes, regardless of their 
severity, wholly remove the basic dignity of the person who committed them. No 
person, regardless of the crime, is beyond the possibility of redemption and 
rehabilitation. And geography should never have such a central role to play in 
the measure of justice, as it does in Hamilton County.

Nor, given laws that require life sentences without parole and the 
technological advances of prison systems, does the common good require putting 
a criminal to death. At least part of the purpose of a criminal justice system 
is to protect society from the criminal, either through the deterrent effect of 
the laws or, failing that, severe penalties for breaking them. When the 
deterrent effect fails, the penalty is imposed. But justice does not require 
doing more than is necessary to protect society. Exceeding the demands of 
protecting society is not justice, but vengeance, something that the law should 
not seek. A system that does not have life without parole might suggest a 
theoretical justification for capital punishment. But a system that does 
provide such a sentence suggests that capital punishment exceeds the bounds of 
justice, and lapses into retribution.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes these points by explaining, "If 
. . . non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety 
from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are 
more in keeping the concrete conditions of the common good and more in 
conformity with the dignity of the human person."

Echoing this section, in a famous letter from 1995, St. Pope John Paul II wrote 
that punishment "ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except 
in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible 
otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements 
in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not 
practically non-existent." Put another way, if it is not necessary to inflict 
capital punishment for the sake of common good, it is necessary not to inflict 
it for the sake of human dignity.

Again, secular law is not bound by Catholic theology. But these doctrines 
appeal to broader principles of human reason, or what some people call "natural 
law." They correspond even to some secular or humanist theories of justice. And 
regardless of the source, they are principles that contribute to a more just, 
humane, and peaceable human community. People rightly convicted of heinous 
crimes deserve a full measure of justice. But neither they nor society deserves 
even a scintilla of vengeance.

(source: Editorial, Kenneth Craycraft is a lawyer, theologian, and member of 
the Enquirer Board of Contributors----Cincinnati Enquirer)








MISSOURI:

Missouri Fought For Years To Hide Where It Got Its Execution Drugs. Now We Know 
What They Were Hiding.



The state of Missouri did everything it could to keep secret where it got the 
drugs it used to put 17 inmates to death. Now, BuzzFeed News has discovered the 
supplier is a pharmacy repeatedly found to engage in hazardous practices that 
could put patients - and convicts - at risk.

The state of Missouri has engaged in a wide-ranging scheme - involving code 
names and envelopes stuffed with cash - to hide the fact that it paid a 
troubled pharmacy for the drugs it used to execute inmates.

Procuring execution drugs has become almost impossible, as major pharmaceutical 
companies stopped making them or refused to provide them for capital 
punishment. Missouri itself faced a crisis in early 2014, when the previous 
pharmacy it had been using was exposed in the press and stopped providing the 
state with drugs. Scrambling, Missouri found a new pharmacy and stockpiled the 
lethal injection drug pentobarbital, enabling it to set a record pace for 
executions, scheduling one a month for more than a year.

To hide the identity of the new pharmacy, the state has taken extraordinary 
steps. It uses a code name for the pharmacy in its official documents. Only a 
handful of state employees know the real name. The state fought at least 6 
lawsuits to stop death row inmates and the press from knowing the pharmacy's 
identity. Even the way Missouri buys and collects the drugs is 
cloak-and-dagger: The state sends a high-ranking corrections officer to a 
clandestine meeting with a company representative, exchanging an envelope full 
of cash for vials of pentobarbital. Since 2014, Missouri has spent more than 
$135,000 in such drug deals.

Death row inmates fear that drugs prepared by such pharmacies could result in a 
painful and protracted death.

But now, BuzzFeed News can reveal the supplier: Foundation Care, a 14-year-old 
pharmacy based in the suburbs of St. Louis that has been repeatedly found to 
engage in hazardous pharmaceutical procedures and whose cofounder has been been 
accused of regularly ordering prescription medications for himself without a 
doctor???s prescription. Late last year, Foundation Care was sold to a 
subsidiary of health care giant Centene Corporation, which declined to say 
whether it will allow the pharmacy to continue supplying execution drugs.

According to 2 sources with knowledge of the matter, Missouri used Foundation 
Care's drugs for 17 executions. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity 
because of strict state laws that prohibit disclosing or publishing the 
identity of the supplier.

Foundation Care is what is known as a compounding pharmacy, one that mixes 
specialty drugs that are not readily available on the market. These pharmacies 
are more loosely regulated than traditional manufacturers, and slipshod 
practices at some of them have led to tainted drugs and deadly disease 
outbreaks.

Death row inmates fear that drugs prepared by such pharmacies could result in a 
painful and protracted death.

According to more than 900 pages of court records and regulatory findings, as 
well as interviews with more than half a dozen people familiar with the 
company, Foundation Care has been accused of multiple problems.

In 2007, the Food and Drug Administration inspected the pharmacy after a 
patient who took a drug supplied by Foundation Care developed pneumonia. The 
FDA found that the pharmacy was not testing all of its drugs for sterility and 
bacterial contamination, and it uncovered a lab report that indicated a vial of 
the pharmacy???s drugs had, in fact, been contaminated with bacteria. After 
initially denying that the vial was tainted with bacteria, the executives later 
insisted that they had purposefully infected it as part of a test, a story the 
FDA did not accept.

In 2013, the FDA designated Foundation Care a "high-risk" pharmacy, and when 
FDA agents showed up to inspect it, the company's CEO tried to block them from 
entering and threatened legal action. Inspectors, who ultimately gained access, 
found "multiple examples" of lax procedures that the agency warned "could lead 
to contamination of drugs, potentially putting patients at risk."

2 former senior employees - including the head of pharmacy operations - have 
alleged in a lawsuit that Foundation Care violated state or federal regulations 
by reselling drugs returned by patients, purposefully omitting the names of 
ingredients in drugs it prepared, and failing to notify other states about a 
$300,000 settlement with Kansas over allegations of Medicaid fraud. The suit 
also accuses one of the pharmacy's founders of "regularly and frequently" 
ordering prescription medications for himself without a prescription, a crime 
that carries up to a year behind bars. One of the employees alleged that during 
a dispute with the founders, she was held against her will and feared she would 
be physically struck. Foundation Care and its founders have denied the 
allegations, and the suit is ongoing.

A suit by another former employee, a pharmacy tech, alleges that she complained 
to her supervisors and the Missouri Board of Pharmacy about "serious 
operational violations." The employee alleged she was fired shortly after 
filing her complaint. The company denied the allegations and settled with the 
employee out of court.

When first approached by a reporter in 2015, Foundation Care's CEO and head 
pharmacist, Dan Blakeley, flatly denied that his company supplied Missouri with 
its execution drugs.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Blakeley said. "All I can tell you is 
your sourcing is mistaken."

When a reporter visited in person this month and informed Blakeley that 
BuzzFeed News would be publishing a story identifying the pharmacy as 
Missouri's supplier, his assistant said he didn't want to talk. The pharmacy 
also did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent by email.

"M7's decision to provide lethal chemicals to the Department was based on M7's 
political views on the death penalty, and not based on economic reasons." In 
court papers, Foundation Care said that it sold execution drugs for political 
reasons. "M7's decision to provide lethal chemicals to the Department was based 
on M7's political views on the death penalty, and not based on economic 
reasons," a representative for the pharmacy wrote in a 2016 affidavit, using 
the state's code name for Foundation Care.

"M7's decision to supply lethal chemicals anonymously arises out of M7's fear 
of harassment and retaliation, both physical and financial, if M7's identity is 
released."

One question that remains unanswered is how Foundation Care itself obtained the 
pentobarbital it sold4 to the state - did it mix the drug on its own or somehow 
procure a manufactured version? Akorn Pharmaceuticals, the only manufacturer 
permitted to make the drug in the United States, requires its distributors to 
sign agreements that they will not sell its products to executioners.

The state of Missouri declined repeated requests for comment, but Foundation 
Care was selected as the state's execution drug supplier by Matt Briesacher, 
who was then the general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections. He 
also declined a request to comment for this story, but in a sworn deposition, 
just weeks after he had selected the pharmacy, Breisacher refused to say how he 
found it or what he knew of its past.

"Did you make inquiry as to whether any professional complaints had been filed 
against M7?" Briesacher was asked.

"Yes," he said.

"And were there any?"

Briesacher's attorneys objected, and he declined to answer.

In August 2007, 2 investigators from the FDA descended on Foundation Care's 
headquarters in Earth City, Missouri.

They were responding to a physician's complaint, which alleged that Foundation 
Care had mixed and sold a drug that caused a "life threatening" illness to a 
patient with cystic fibrosis. After the patient took the drug, called Colistin, 
she had trouble breathing and developed a bad cough that made her vomit, the 
doctor wrote. Soon, the woman was hospitalized, and an X-ray showed signs of 
pneumonia.

In a subsequent lawsuit, Foundation Care denied wrongdoing and reached a 
settlement for an unknown sum years after the patient had died.

In the 2007 inspection, investigators found the pharmacy was not testing all of 
its drugs for sterility and bacteria before shipping them to patients. While 
going through the pharmacy's documents, the investigators also noticed a lab 
result that showed an "embedded object" in a drug the pharmacy mixed. The 
embedded object turned out to be bacteria.

At first, Blakeley, the company's CEO, denied that it was bacteria, saying it 
was merely dust.

Days later, Blakeley said that he and another Foundation Care executive had 
purposefully infected the vial as part of a test, opening the vial with a can 
opener to replicate what a customer had done. Foundation Care produced no 
records to back up this account, so the agency refused to accept it and cited 
the pharmacy for not properly documenting and investigating what happened.

In 2012, compounding pharmacies across the country came under new scrutiny when 
one in Massachusetts mixed drugs that infected at least 750 people with 
meningitis, killing 76. In response, the FDA identified 29 compounding 
pharmacies across the US - including Foundation Care - that the agency deemed 
"high-risk."

Compounding pharmacies are supposed to mix medications for the specific needs 
of patients. For example, a patient who needs a certain drug that comes in pill 
form but who can only take it as a liquid could use a compounding pharmacy to 
make it. Compounding pharmacies are regulated mostly by states, and the drugs 
they produce have a significantly higher failure rate than those of 
manufactured drugs, which are regulated by the FDA. Inspections by the Missouri 
Board of Pharmacy over the past decade found that 1 in 5 drugs created by 
compounding pharmacies failed to meet standards.

A photograph taken by FDA investigators shows a Foundation Care employee 
entering the pharmacy's clean room.

In March 2013, in the wake of the meningitis outbreak, FDA inspectors again 
showed up at Foundation Care's front door, but Blakeley, the CEO and head 
pharmacist, didn't want to let them in. "Mr. Blakeley didn't believe we had the 
authority to inspect his facility unless we had a product complaint or drug 
recall," the lead FDA investigator wrote in a report.

After arguing with the investigators over whether they could enter or take 
documents, Blakeley eventually relented.

The 3 investigators found "multiple examples" of sloppy work that could lead to 
contaminated drugs. The inspectors also found that the pharmacy was not doing 
enough to "assure that drug products conform to appropriate standards of 
identity, strength, quality and purity." The inspectors found inadequate 
hand-washing and questionable gloving practices, and they determined that a 
test for sterility and a common toxin had not been conducted since at least the 
previous year.

Foundation Care's conduct "could lead to contamination of drugs, potentially 
putting patients at risk."

When the inspectors told Blakeley what they found, he "stated if we post our 
findings he will seek legal counsel and come at us with a vengeance, anyone 
involved," the investigator wrote.

Foundation Care would later tell the FDA that it would enact changes in 
response to some of the findings. But to many of the criticisms, the pharmacy's 
response was that it didn't need to change its practices because it adhered to 
state standards. (After the 2012 meningitis outbreak, the FDA sought greater 
oversight of companies such as Foundation Care - and, in fact, cited the 
pharmacy's practices as a specific reason why the agency needed more control 
over drug compounders.)

Following its 2nd inspection of Foundation Care, the FDA sent a letter to the 
Missouri Board of Pharmacy in February 2014 warning that the pharmacy's conduct 
"could lead to contamination of drugs, potentially putting patients at risk."

It is unclear whether the Missouri pharmacy board took steps to oversee 
Foundation Care, because the state refused to turn over inspection records to 
BuzzFeed News. But on the very day the FDA warned Missouri about the company, 
executioners injected Foundation Care's drugs into a death row inmate.

Regulators are not the only ones who raised alarms about Foundation Care. 
Inside the company, employees said their bosses engaged in dangerous 
pharmaceutical practices, asked them to break the law, and, when they refused, 
meted out swift retaliation.

In 2017, 2 of the company's top employees - Katie Mothershed, who had been the 
head of pharmacy operations, and Gina Jaksetic, the former senior director of 
client relations - filed suit in state court, accusing the pharmacy of serious 
violations. Among them: Foundation Care took medications returned by patients 
and, in violation of state law, resold them to other customers; Blakeley and 
Foundation Care CFO Mike Schultz asked employees to omit some ingredients from 
the label of a pain-killing cream; and Schultz ordered drugs for himself 
without a prescription.

According to the suit, the pharmacy's founders breached another legal 
requirement when they refused to tell other states that Foundation Care had 
reached a settlement with Kansas over allegations of Medicaid fraud. (In 2015, 
without admitting wrongdoing, the pharmacy had agreed to reimburse the state of 
Kansas for $300,000.)

Blakeley and Schultz both carried guns in the office, the suit says, and 
Schultz frequently yelled at and demeaned the women. Mothershed described a 
meeting with the 2 executives that became so heated that Blakeley stood in the 
doorway and physically barred her and Jaksetic. Meanwhile, "Schultz repeatedly 
yelled at Mothershed to 'shut up' and 'shut her mouth,'" according to the 
lawsuit. "Schultz also repeatedly yelled 'who do you work for' in an animated, 
intimidating manner."

Schultz "sprang toward Mothershed with his hands in the air," the suit says, 
and both Jaksetic and Mothershed believed he was going to hit her.

After 45 minutes, the suit says, Blakeley moved aside and let the women leave.

The 2 women declined to speak with BuzzFeed News. Their attorney declined to 
comment.

Foundation Care lawyers have denied the allegations in court filings.

Another employee sued Foundation Care for racial discrimination in July 2016.

Yolandra Smith, a pharmacy tech who is black, said she was threatened and fired 
because she complained to her superiors and the Missouri Board of Pharmacy 
about "serious operational violations." The nature of those allegations is 
unclear, because the state refused to turn over records to BuzzFeed News.

After she was fired, Smith accused Foundation Care of filing false information 
in an effort to keep her from receiving unemployment benefits. She said that 
Foundation Care's owners treated her differently because of her race.

The pharmacy denied the allegations and settled out of court. Smith also 
declined to speak with BuzzFeed News.

Shortly before each execution, David Dormire would climb into his car carrying 
an envelope stuffed with more than $7,000 in cash, nearly all of it in $100 
bills. Dormire, the 2nd in command at the Missouri Department of Corrections, 
was buying lethal injection drugs for the state.

No other corrections employee would join him on his trips, out of concern that 
too many people would know who he was buying the drugs from. Only a handful of 
people within the Department of Corrections knew the pharmacy's real name.

Dormire would hand over an envelope of $7,178.88 to "M7," the state's code name 
for Foundation Care. In exchange, Dormire got four vials of pentobarbital, or 
10 grams. It was double what was required for 1 execution, providing the state 
a backup in case things went wrong. Shortly before each execution, David 
Dormire would climb into his car carrying an envelope stuffed with more than 
$7,000 in cash, nearly all of it in $100 bills.

The purchase of execution drugs is the only state function known to operate in 
such secrecy, skirting anti-fraud rules by deploying envelopes of cash and 
brushing aside the requirement for a witness to the transactions.

Nationwide, the secrecy behind lethal injections has led to botched execution 
attempts and illegal drug deals. In 2015, a Georgia execution had to be called 
off after the executioners discovered the syringe had particles floating in it. 
Georgia promised a transparent investigation into what went wrong, but when the 
results did not fit with the state's theory that the drug was compromised 
because of the cold temperatures it was stored in, the state attempted to 
withhold the results from the public, the media, and the courts.

Oklahoma executed a man with the wrong lethal injection drug after the 
pharmacist knowingly sent the wrong drug, and the state nearly made the same 
mistake again before it noticed the error. A grand jury, led by the state's 
conservative attorney general, produced a report that placed much of the blame 
on the secrecy. Finding the way that Oklahoma procured the drugs 
"surreptitious" and "questionable at best," the grand jury said the secrecy 
"contributed greatly to the Department's receipt of the wrong execution drugs."

"[T]his investigation revealed that the paranoia of identifying participants 
clouded the Department's judgment and caused administrators to blatantly 
violate their own policies," the grand jury found.

For years, Missouri death row inmates' attorneys have tried in vain to pull 
back the curtain on who is supplying the drugs.

Starting in October 2013, Missouri began obtaining its drugs from an 
Oklahoma-based compounding pharmacy called the Apothecary Shoppe. Reporters 
quickly discovered that the pharmacy was selling execution drugs despite not 
being licensed to sell medicines in Missouri, a practice that would normally be 
a felony. Shortly after the pharmacy's name was revealed, it agreed to no 
longer sell execution drugs.

The state quickly found a new seller but doubled down on secrecy, refusing to 
disclose any information at all about the new pharmacy, Foundation Care. But 
there were hints: An attorney representing the state's carefully anonymized 
supplier had previously represented Foundation Care in an unrelated lawsuit in 
2011. The attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

The state argued that identifying their supplier would expose it to boycotts 
and harassment, and make it impossible to carry out the death penalty.

Inmates' lawyers argued the secrecy puts their clients at great risk of a 
painful death, but then-attorney general Chris Koster's office dismissed their 
concerns as unfounded. There was "no reason to believe that the execution will 
not, like previous Missouri executions using pentobarbital, be rapid and 
painless," argued an attorney for the state.

Errors by compounding pharmacies can lead to painful executions, Dr. Larry 
Sasich, a pharmaceutical expert, wrote in a 2014 report for a lawsuit filed by 
death row inmates. If the drug is contaminated, there could be a "substantial 
risk of pain and suffering." If the pH levels are off, the inmate could feel 
like they are being burned alive. If the drug isn???t potent enough, the inmate 
could experience nausea and vomiting, or have difficulty breathing and 
eventually suffer brain damage - but still be alive. If the drug is too potent, 
on the other hand, the inmate could be suffocating or gasping for breath before 
they become unconscious.

Concerns about sterilization, pH levels, and drug potency were all specifically 
cited by the FDA investigators when they inspected Foundation Care.

It is not known if Foundation Care's drugs caused prisoners to die in agony - 
in part because Missouri made it difficult if not impossible for witnesses to 
know if an inmate might be experiencing pain during an execution.

During the time it used Foundation Care's drug to execute 17 people, Missouri 
had a practice of heavily sedating inmates before witnesses were escorted in. 
The execution chamber was soundproof; witnesses would not be able to hear 
gasping, such as witnesses have reported in other states. During the execution, 
inmates are strapped down tightly to a gurney then covered up with a sheet, 
making any movements difficult to detect.

During the many lawsuits seeking to expose Foundation Care, officials refused 
to answer basic questions about the pharmacy's qualifications. The attorney who 
represented the state on execution matters told a federal judge that even he 
didn't know the identity of "M7."

Several federal judges expressed unease over the secrecy.

Inmate Michael Taylor was sentenced to death for killing and raping a 
15-year-old girl in 1989 after abducting her from her school bus stop. A week 
before his execution in 2014, the state turned to a new supplier, M7, and 
refused to turn over any information about its qualifications.

"In fact, from the absolute dearth of information Missouri has disclosed to 
this court, the 'pharmacy' on which Missouri relies could be nothing more than 
a high school chemistry class."

Taylor and other death row inmates sued, arguing that Missouri's secrecy made 
it impossible to know if they would be killed humanely. Taylor lost and 
appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also decided against him, 
over the objections of 3 judges on the court.

"One must wonder at the skills of the compounding pharmacist," Judge Kermit Bye 
wrote for the dissenting judges. "In fact, from the absolute dearth of 
information Missouri has disclosed to this court, the 'pharmacy' on which 
Missouri relies could be nothing more than a high school chemistry class."

The case went to the US Supreme Court, which, despite the dissent of 3 
justices, allowed the state to execute Taylor without knowing any information 
about Foundation Care.

After that, Missouri largely cleared out its death row - executing 17 prisoners 
with Foundation Care's drugs.

The aggressive pace Missouri set - scheduling 1 execution per month - made the 
state an outlier in the death penalty. While other states slowed down their 
execution schedules, Missouri sped up, executing inmates at a faster clip than 
it had ever done before.

Missouri hasn't carried out an execution in more than a year now, because it 
executed all of the eligible prisoners.

But now, a new inmate faces death. In March, the state intends to execute 
Russell Bucklew, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's lover in 
front of his kids in 1996. Bucklew then kidnapped and raped his ex-girlfriend, 
and shot a police officer in a subsequent chase.

His attorneys have argued that he, in particular, faces a heightened risk of a 
botched execution. Bucklew has a rare disease that causes tumors in his nose 
and throat - experts for his defense say that lethally injecting him puts him 
at risk of choking to death.

For 13 years, Foundation Care was owned by its 2 founders, Blakeley and 
Schultz. But in October 2017, the 2 sold the pharmacy to a subsidiary of 
Centene Corporation, a publicly traded, St. Louis-based health care giant that 
brought in $40.6 billion in revenue last year. Both the pharmacy and Centene 
declined to say how much the company paid to acquire Foundation Care.

Centene did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether it was 
aware that the pharmacy had sold execution drugs or whether it would allow the 
pharmacy to continue selling them, and it did not respond to a detailed list of 
questions sent by email.

Former attorney general Chris Koster, who was in office when the state selected 
Foundation Care and who oversaw the legal battles that kept the pharmacy's 
identity hidden for years, was term-limited out of the office in January 2017. 
When he left public service, Koster found a new job: senior vice president of 
corporate services at Centene.

The company declined to make him available for an interview or answer questions 
about whether he played any role in the purchase of Foundation Care.

(source: Chris McDaniel is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News)