Texas executes more people than any other state by a wide margin — more than the next five states on that list put together. On Wednesday, Texas will add another name to the list of inmates executed, that ofMichael Yowell, 43, who will be put to death for murdering his parents and grandmother.
Yowell’s execution is significant because, as The Associated Press reported last week, the drug used to kill him will come from a controversial new supply provided not by a major pharmaceutical company but by a small compounding pharmacy outside of Houston, raising ethical questions about the drug’s quality and effectiveness. The drug, a widely-used sedative called pentobarbital, causes fatal respiratory arrest in high doses. Pentobarbital is used by several states in executions, usually as part of a three-drug cocktail.
Then, the same thing happened with sodium thiopental, another part of the three-drug cocktail, and Texas and several other states abandoned the three-drug protocol in favor of a straight dose of pentobarbital.
But before long Texas had exhausted its supplies of pentobarbital. The last inmate to be executed in Texas with pentobarbital from a known supplier was Robert Garza, on Sept. 19 of this year. Suddenly, Texas no longer had access to its preferred method of execution.
continue to read here
No comments:
Post a Comment