Texas prison officials have offered scant evidence to support their claim that pharmacies that supply the state with execution drugs would be in danger of violence if their identities were made public.
If those officials are investigating the threats, including a suggestion a truck bomb could blow up a such a pharmacy, as a serious risk to the safety of the pharmacies or their employees, they refuse to acknowledge doing so.
The Associated Press could find no evidence that any such investigations are underway in Texas, and police in the community where one such pharmacy is located said they are not concerned. In neighboring Oklahoma, the attorney general said Thursday he was investigating such a threat, but several other law enforcement agencies told the AP his office has never mentioned it.
Instead, anti-death penalty advocates believe Texas and other states are trumping up the possibility of violence to avoid having to disclose their name of suppliers, ensuring they can keep buying the drugs they need to put condemned inmates to death.
"If these are the types of threats that the departments are hearing and they're not providing the information to back it up, it's just sort of irresponsible and playing on people's fear," said Jen Moreno, an attorney at the University of California-Berkeley who has represented death row inmates.
Read more: http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2014/04/usa-scant-evidence-of-threats-to.html#ixzz2xw2kgEzT
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