Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Judge halts Texas executions over drug supplier information

The death chamber is seen through the steel bars from the viewing room at the federal penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas By Jon Herskovitz and Heide Brandes AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge has temporarily suspended the execution of two inmates planned for this month in Texas, saying the state has hidden information about the supplier of the drugs to be used in the lethal injections. The decision is part of a series of recent court rulings that have mandated states to release information about drugs used for lethal injection, saying that keeping the information secret violates due process protections of the U.S. Constitution. "While the state has provided plaintiffs information about the process by which they will be executed, it has masked information about the product that will kill them," U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore wrote in Houston in a temporary injunction issued on Wednesday. Several states have struggled to obtain drugs for executions, while many pharmaceutical companies, mostly in Europe, have imposed sales bans because they object to having medications made for other purposes used in lethal injections.








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