Posted on Dec 9, 2022
Why it's getting harder for Missouri to keep its lethal injection drugs a secret
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Despite the increasing difficulty of obtaining drugs for lethal injection, states like Missouri keep killing death row inmates. The result: botched executions and increased secrecy.
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund as part of its series Shadow of Death, which considers St. Louis County’s use of the death penalty.
When Missouri executioners injected Kevin Johnson with a lethal dose of pentobarbital on November 29, few people were there to see it. One of only two reporters permitted to observe, Jim Salter of the Associated Press, described a quick and quiet end. Johnson closed his eyes while the drug took effect and his spiritual adviser murmured Bible verses, including Psalm 23: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
“Within seconds,” Salter wrote, “all movement ceased.”
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund as part of its series Shadow of Death, which considers St. Louis County’s use of the death penalty.
When Missouri executioners injected Kevin Johnson with a lethal dose of pentobarbital on November 29, few people were there to see it. One of only two reporters permitted to observe, Jim Salter of the Associated Press, described a quick and quiet end. Johnson closed his eyes while the drug took effect and his spiritual adviser murmured Bible verses, including Psalm 23: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
“Within seconds,” Salter wrote, “all movement ceased.”
Why it's getting harder for Missouri to keep its lethal injection drugs a secret
Posted from kcur.org
Crime
Punishment
Death
Drugs
Pharmaceuticals
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 5
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I don't like our current crowding of our prisons and Management of prisoners!
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Thereafter, Missouri got a court order to prevent having to disclose other suppliers.
Nevertheless, in 2018, McDaniel, then at BuzzFeed News, uncovered the name of the new supplier, a St. Louis-area compounding pharmacy. He tweeted that it took him “Two failed open records lawsuits ... Three years of digging ... Getting the cops called on me ... [and] A state assistant attorney general calling BuzzFeed’s lawyers to complain about me.”
But by the time his story was published, the supplier at issue had been bought by a subsidiary of Centene, which assured McDaniel that since being acquired the pharmacy “has never supplied, and will never supply any pharmaceutical product to any state for the purpose of effectuating executions.”
Centene did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Karen Pojmann, the communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections, wrote in an email: “Missouri’s execution protocol, which is based in state statute, prohibits disclosing the identities of the execution team and the drug supplier. (In fact, I don’t have access to the information you’re requesting.)”
Next month, Missouri plans to execute another person from St. Louis County: Amber McLaughlin, who was convicted in 2006 of first-degree murder. Again the state will frame the killing as being done on behalf of its citizens. It just won’t tell them where the drugs come from, or who’s profiting from their sale, before all movement ceases."...
..."Thereafter, Missouri got a court order to prevent having to disclose other suppliers.
Nevertheless, in 2018, McDaniel, then at BuzzFeed News, uncovered the name of the new supplier, a St. Louis-area compounding pharmacy. He tweeted that it took him “Two failed open records lawsuits ... Three years of digging ... Getting the cops called on me ... [and] A state assistant attorney general calling BuzzFeed’s lawyers to complain about me.”
But by the time his story was published, the supplier at issue had been bought by a subsidiary of Centene, which assured McDaniel that since being acquired the pharmacy “has never supplied, and will never supply any pharmaceutical product to any state for the purpose of effectuating executions.”
Centene did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Karen Pojmann, the communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections, wrote in an email: “Missouri’s execution protocol, which is based in state statute, prohibits disclosing the identities of the execution team and the drug supplier. (In fact, I don’t have access to the information you’re requesting.)”
Next month, Missouri plans to execute another person from St. Louis County: Amber McLaughlin, who was convicted in 2006 of first-degree murder. Again the state will frame the killing as being done on behalf of its citizens. It just won’t tell them where the drugs come from, or who’s profiting from their sale, before all movement ceases."...
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There are humane ways to do it by lethal injection, but you need skilled practitioners in order to pull it off correctly. Just my opinion.
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