Mike Ward posts, "Complaint: Texas illegally acquiring lethal drugs," at the Austin American-Statesman.
In a new challenge to Texas’ execution procedure, two condemned convicts complained to federal and state today alleging that state prison officials have been illegally obtaining the prescription drugs used in executions.
In a complaint delivered to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Cleve Foster and Humberto Leal contended that a DEA registration number used to purchase the three execution drugs is registered to a non-existent hospital — in possible violation of state and federal law.
A prescription written by a doctor is needed to obtain prescription drugs under federal and state law.
“The DEA registration number used by TDCJ was … obtained and/or retained through false pretenses,” because it is registered to the Huntsville Unit Hospital, which has been closed since approximately 1983, the complaint states.
Attorneys for Foster and Leal asked the Department of Justice and DPS to investigate TDCJ’s potential violations and “take appropriate steps if TDCJ has violated federal (or state) law.”
The letter to Holder further alleges that the controlled substances used by TDCJ to carry out executions “are neither kept by a pharmacy, hospital, or clinic, nor dispensed by an authorized practitioner through a prescription.”
Instead, the complaint alleges, the drugs are kept by prison officials, who are not authorized by law to possess or distribute controlled substances.
Brandi Grissom posts, "Lawyers Allege Texas Illegally Obtains Death Drugs," at the Texas Tribune.
Lawyers for two Texas death row inmates today asked state and federal law enforcement to investigate whether prison officials illegally obtained death penalty drugs the state used in nearly all of its 466 executions by using the Drug Enforcement Agency registration number of a long-closed facility.
The DEA registration number that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice uses to a obtain drugs used for lethal injection is issued to the Huntsville Unit Hospital. That hospital, built in 1935, used to be the main medical facility for inmates. But during state reforms to prison health care, the Huntsville Unit Hospital was replaced in 1983 with a facility at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
"For TDCJ to have misrepresented for 25 years the information the DEA relies upon to assess the legitimacy of these drugs reflects a profound disregard for protocol and the law,” said Maurie Levin, an attorney for two death row inmates who are suing the state over its recent decision to change its lethal injection protocol. The inmates ague that the TDCJ violated state transparency laws when it decided to change one of the drugs used in the state's three-drug lethal injection cocktail.
The letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, an appendix of exhibits, and the letter to DPS are available in Adobe .pdf format.
Earlier Texas lethal injection coverage begins at the link.
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