Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and four news organizations filed an emergency legal motion on Thursday, demanding that Pennsylvania reveal the source of its execution drugs.
Later this month, the state is scheduled to put 57-year-old Hubert Michael to death for the 1993 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl. While the execution has been stayed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the ACLU fears the hold could be lifted at any time, opening the way for the first execution in Pennsylvania in more than 15 years.
Since 2011, when the European Union banned the export of drugs for use in executions, Pennsylvania and other death penalty states have been forced to rely on untested drug combinations and loosely regulated compounding pharmacies. And most have become secretive about the sources and contents of their execution drugs. Death row inmates around the country have sued to block their executions on the ground that withholding this information is unconstitutional, as untested or poorly prepared drug cocktails could create a level of suffering that violates the Eight Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. So far, they’ve met with little success. Clayton Lockett, who lost his bid to force the state of Oklahoma to reveal the source and purity of the drugs used to put him to death, writhed and moaned in apparent agony after being injected with a secretly acquired drug combinations in April.
View this article –
News Organizations Battle Pennsylvania Over Secret Source of Its Execution Drugs
