Texas is scheduled to carry out its third execution of 2011. It would be the state's 467th execution since 1983.
To date, there have been 12 executions in the nation this year; 1,246 post-Furman executions since 1977. Ohio has carried out three executions already this year.
"1st Texas execution with new drug set for Tuesday," is the title of Michael Graczyk's AP report, via the Houston Chronicle.
Condemned inmate Cary Kerr acknowledges that the prospect of becoming the first Texas prisoner to be executed with a new drug is unsettling."It's very scary," Kerr said recently from a tiny visiting cage outside death row. "I'm not volunteering to test nothing for the state."
Kerr, 46, is set to die Tuesday in Huntsville for the rape and slaying of a woman near Fort Worth 10 years ago.
Texas will use pentobarbital as one of the three drugs in its lethal injection process because of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, a sedative used in the drug mixture in the 466 executions since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.
Another Texas inmate, Cleve Foster, had been set to die using the new drug in early April, but the U.S. Supreme Court halted his punishment to take a further look at his case.
Pentobarbital has won approval in the courts for executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.
And:
Kerr's lawyers focused their appeals before the Supreme Court Monday on whether he received effective legal help earlier in his case. The high court is reviewing an Alabama case where similar claims have been raised.
Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused an appeal from Kerr and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down a clemency request.
Houston's KPFT-FM will host Execution Watch on the web and it's HD radio broadcast signal beginning at 6:00 p.m. (CDT), tonight.
According to TDCJ, seven additional executions are scheduled in Texas during 2011.
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