Texas is set to carry out its sixth execution of 2014, tonight in Huntsville. It would be the 514th post-Furman Texas execution since 1982, and the 275th execution under the administration of Gov. Rick Perry. Texas is responsible for more than 37% of the nation's post-Furman executions.
"Texas parole board refuses to stop execution," is the AP report by Michael Graczyk, via the Austin American-Statesman.
On Wednesday, Hernandez-Llanas, 44, was set for lethal injection that would make him the second Texas prisoner within a week executed with a supply of pentobarbital newly obtained from a source Texas prison officials have refused to identify.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from another Texas death row inmate, Tommy Lynn Sells, whose attorneys argued unsuccessfully they needed the name of the drug supplier to verify its potency to determine he wouldn’t be subjected to unconstitutional pain and suffering. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice contends the information needs to be withheld to keep the new drug provider from threats of violence from death penalty opponents.
Sells quietly went to his death Thursday with the new drug.
Hernandez-Llanas also was a plaintiff in Sells’ lawsuit. On Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a reprieve he won from a lower court, putting his punishment back on track. Attorneys for the condemned prisoner declined to appeal because the Supreme Court turned down the same request from Sells.
There have been 15 executions in American death penalty states this year; a total of 1,374 post-Furman executions since 1977.
Houston's KPFT-FM will host Execution Watch on the web and its HD radio broadcast signal beginning at 6:00 p.m. (CDT), this evening.
According to TDCJ, Texas state district courts have set three additional execution dates.
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