"Attorney general proposes that Missouri make its own lethal injection chemicals," is by Tony Rizzo of the Kansas City Star.
Missouri’s struggles to obtain drugs to carry out executions have been plagued by controversy and legal challenges.
On Thursday, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster proposed a solution: Missouri should make its own lethal injection chemicals.
“The legislature should appropriate funds to establish a state-operated, DEA-licensed laboratory to produce the execution chemicals in our state,” Koster said in a speech to a bar association group at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, "Missouri attorney general: State needs its own execution pharmacy," by Jeremy Kohler.
“Lethal injection relies upon an uneasy cooperation between medical professionals who assist in the executions, pharmaceutical companies that provide the chemicals, and the state,” Koster said, according to a copy of his speech. “In recent years, this cooperative arrangement has become so strained that continued use of lethal injection as the preferred execution method is currently being reconsidered in several states.”
Last week in Tennessee, for example, the governor signed into law a bill that would allow for death by electrocution if drugs for lethal injections were not available.
Koster noted that journalists and condemned inmates have pressed the state for disclosure about how the drugs are made, and who makes them.
Earlier this month, the Post-Dispatch and other news organizations sued the Missouri Department of Corrections to compel it to release information about the drugs the state uses for injection executions.
You can read the Missouri Attorney General's prepared remarks, thanks to the Post-Dispatch.
"Missouri official proposes execution drug lab," is the AP report filed by Jim Salter, via the Springfield News-Leader.
Missouri should establish its own laboratory to produce chemicals for use in executions rather than rely on an "uneasy cooperation" with medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies, the state's attorney general said Thursday.
Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, spoke to the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis during the group's meeting at Lake of the Ozarks.
"For Missouri to maintain lethal injection ... it is my belief the Legislature should remove market-driven participants and pressures from the system and appropriate funds to establish a state-operated, DEA-licensed, laboratory to produce the execution chemicals in our state," said Koster, according to a transcript provided by his office.
A state-operated execution drug lab would be a first, and it isn't clear if it could be implemented through a simple change in Missouri's protocol or if legislative approval would be necessary. Messages seeking comment from officials with the Department of Corrections and the Attorney General's office were not returned.
St. Louis Public Radio posts, "Expressing Concern Over Execution Secrecy, Koster Calls On State To Make Lethal Injection Drugs," by Chris McDaniel.
The announcement comes at a time when there are few willing suppliers, which Koster admitted in his speech.
"The vast majority of medical professionals refuse to participate in any aspect of the procedure, believing it conflicts with their Hippocratic Oath," Koster said, according to a copy of his speech, which he delivered to a conference of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis at the Lake of the Ozarks.
To hide the identity of those that are willing, the state made the supplier of its execution drugs a secret last October. An investigation by St. Louis Public Radio revealed that the state’s previous supplier was not licensed to sell in Missouri and had been cited in the past by regulatory agencies.
To keep it a secret, the state was paying this pharmacy a little more than $11,000, all in cash, each execution.
Koster has ardently supported secrecy in the past. But speaking in Lake of the Ozarks, he said the transparency questions should "concern all of us deeply."
“While this creeping secrecy is legal, it may not be prudent, and it merits the attention of state lawmakers,” he said.
"Missouri attorney general wants the state to produce its own lethal injection drugs," is by Mark Berman of the Washington Post.
Missouri has executed four people in 2014, which is as many people as the state executed between 2006 and 2013.
The botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma last month drew worldwide attention, reviving a debate over the death penalty and the way it is carried out in the United States. An execution in Texas, set to be the first since the botch in Oklahoma, was halted hours before the injection after a court cited the intellectual disability of inmate Robert James Campbell.
As a result, Missouri’s scheduled execution of Russell Bucklew last week would have been the first in the country since the Oklahoma episode. That execution was halted, reinstated and halted again during a judicial back-and-forth before the Supreme Court ultimately stayed the execution and sent it back to lower courts. Attorneys for Campbell and Bucklew had criticized the secrecy involved in the lethal injection process in both states.
Additional coverage includes:
"Attorney General Koster Thinks Missouri Should Make Its Own Execution Drugs," by Lindsay Tolerfor River Front Times.
ABA Journal posts, "AG’s unique solution to dearth of execution drugs: State should manufacture its own supply," by Martha Neil.
Earlier coverage from Missouri begins at the link.
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