Is it time to bring back the gas chamber (like San Quentin's old beauty, above), or maybe the electric chair? Death-penalty opponent Richard Dieter doesn't think so. "Those things just raise the spectacle level, and I don't think it's where states want to go."by KenMy friend Jon snagged this HuffPost Crime piece on his Facebook page, "Texas Execution Drug Shortage: State Running Out Of Pentobarbital." The problem facing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is --
that its remaining supply of pentobarbital expires in September and that no alternatives have been found. It wasn't immediately clear whether two executions scheduled for next month would be delayed. The state has already executed 11 death-row inmates this year, and at least seven more have execution dates in coming months."We will be unable to use our current supply of pentobarbital after it expires," agency spokesman Jason Clark said. "We are exploring all options at this time."
Don't you just hate it when that happens? You're just humming along, executing away, right and left, and you glance at the expiration date on your remaining supply of death drugs and it's almost up! And apparently the "use by" date on your death drug is harder-and-faster than, say, the "best if used by" date on your can of ravioli.Which brings me to the question Jon raised in circulating the post:
What's wrong with expired death penalty drugs? Expired drugs become too safe? Side effects now include not dying?
Because the HuffPost article, while it answers many interesting questions, most of which are questions I didn't know I had, it doesn't shed any light on this one.Author Michael Graczyk explains, for example, that the Texas death-squad people got themselves into this fix by switching to pentobarbital as a single-drug offing agent after going through this same darned snafu last year with one of the drugs in its old three-drug cocktail -- their old supply expired and it was tough to score new product.Another fascinating thing we learn in the article is that apparently drugmakers are becoming squeamish about having their products used in executions. HuffPost's Michael Graczyk quotes Richard Dieter, exec director of the Washington-based anti-death-penalty Death Penalty Information Center:
"The states really scramble to go all over to get drugs. Some went overseas, some got from each other. But these manufacturers, a number them are based in Europe, don't want to participate in our executions. So they've clamped down as much as they can."
They don't want to participate in our executions, eh? There don't seem to be any drugs you can buy off the shelf as execution drugs, even if you're officially authorized to be executing people, like Texas is, and the drugmakers seem to be developing thin skins about having products of theirs which are marketed as sedatives and such repurposed for executions. I guess it's not quite in step with Pharma World's general ethos of "better living through chemistry."By the way, the Death Penalty Information Center's Richard Dieter says of the Texas situation: "When Texas raises a flag that it's having a problem, obviously numerically it's significant around the country because like they're doing half the executions in the country right now." (A statistic: Since 1982, six years after the Supreme Court reauthorized the death penaly in the U.S., "Texas has executed 503 inmates. Virginia is a distant second at 110." Go, Lone Stars!)Michael Graczyk records some of the steps other states are exploring to deal with their death-drug deficit, including the suggestion by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster that the state go back to the gas chamber, which is still allowed by state law, though as it happens the state doesn't happen to have one. (Richard Dieter, for one, doesn't think there's a widespread return to the gas chamber or electric chair in the offing. "Those things just raise the spectacle level, and I don't think it's where states want to go.")Now you might think that, with Texas's pentobarbital supply expiring and all those executions piling up, there would be a rush to make the most of that existing supply. But according to Michael Graczyk's math, there may only be enough of the stuff left for three lucky winners.
As of May 2012, Texas had 46 of the 2.5-gram vials of pentobarbital, presumably enough to execute as many as 23 prisoners since each execution requires a 5-gram dose. The execution Wednesday of an inmate convicted in two road-rage killings was the 20th lethal injection since that disclosure.
On the plus side, at least the Texas death-drug inventory-control people won't have to see about dumping the expired stock abroad for Third World executions.Which brings us back to Jon's original question, about how death drugs "go bad." Actually I think he's already nailed it. Expired death drugs probably just can't be counted on to produce, you know, death, and what good is a death drug that can't be counted on to kill the son of a bitch dead? It makes for lawsuits, not to mention embarrassing publicity, perhaps insinuating that your state's execution program has devolved into something resembling a Road Runner cartoon. Just think, when you've got to execute your death-row inmate all over again and all you've got on hand is your unreliable expired death drugs, what do you do? Drop a safe on the poor bugger?*For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."
