That's the title of Bob Ray Sanders' latest Fort Worth Star-Telegram column. It's also available from the Modesto Bee. Here's the beginning:
It is welcome news that the Texas prison system’s supply of the drug used for execution is about to expire and the state may have trouble replenishing its stash of pentobarbital.Even if this problem for the state isn’t long-lasting, it gives me a ray of hope that one day lethal injection may go the way of “Old Sparky,” the electric chair used in Texas for 40 years.
When the state took charge of executions (previously relegated to the counties) in 1923, it decided that electrocution, rather than hanging, would be the method used to kill inmates sentenced to death.
Between 1924 and 1964, Texas electrocuted 361 people in that chair before the Supreme Court halted capital punishment for a while.
After reinstatement of the death penalty by the high court, Texas decided to adopt lethal injection for execution, retiring Old Sparky — now housed at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville — and replacing it with a gurney.
ABC News posts, "Why Texas Is Running Out of Its Execution Drug," by Ted Hesson.
There are drugs out there that Texas could use, according to Jen Moreno, a staff attorney at the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, a group that represents inmates on death row.
States have made poor choices around such drugs in recent past, though, she said. "It's not like these are really reasoned, researched decisions that the departments are making."
Arkansas, for example, announced earlier this year that it would use phenobarbital for lethal injections. The drug had never been used in an execution before, though, and the state later reversed its decision. "There were serious questions about whether or not it would actually cause death," she said.
Earlier coverage of Texas' expiring stock of pentobarbital begins at the link.
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