Saturday, October 03, 2015

Can't kill them without the right drugs


And because a supplier had provided a different drug, Oklahoma has called off the execution of a probably innocent man. Damn!
Oklahoma’s top criminal court agreed Friday to stop all executions indefinitely after confusion over a lethal injection drug shipment led to a stay for an execution, although officials maintained their refusal to divulge the identity of the state’s lethal drug provider.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin on Wednesday issued a last-minute order delaying the execution of Richard Glossip, whose case has garnered international attention, after the state’s Corrections Department received potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride from a pharmaceutical provider. The shipment of the wrong drug arrived just hours beforehand.

The state’s Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday accepted Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s request for a stay of three executions set for the next two months while authorities investigate the matter. His office declined to identify the pharmaceutical company that sent the drug, saying that Oklahoma law protects the company’s identity for its safety.

State officials said the shipment of potassium acetate — instead of the potassium chloride mandated in Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol — was not a mistake, although they acknowledged that the drug was outside their protocol.

“I don’t think it was a mistake, because we were told potassium acetate is medically interchangeable with potassium chloride,” Corrections Department spokesman Alex Gerszewski told Al Jazeera.
They thought it would work but it was not in the rule book and would have opened them up to a big can of legal whoopass if something went wrong. Got to kill them by the rules.

Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]