In 2018, the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections admitted defeat – he found no lethal injection drugs.
Three years had passed since the last execution in the state, and Joe Allbaugh conceded at a press conference that he called “shabby individuals” from “all around the world – down to the back alleys of the under -Indian continent” – to find the necessary deadly cocktail.
But in detailing his “mad hunt” for the drug, the former FEMA director inadvertently revealed a crisis that had plagued America’s death row for years.
From basement pharmacies to expired execution drugs and excruciating deaths, an underground system quietly sustains death row across the country.
Huntsville Penitentiary in Texas
Problems with lethal injections in the United States stem primarily from pharmacies’ unwillingness to produce the drugs used in executions. Pfizer’s decision to stop using its products in 2016 shut down the last remaining source of drugs on the open market.
Yet the executions continued, leading to criticism from the Texas Department of Corrections after years of extending deadlines for the use of pentobarbital, a lethal injection drug.
The state denies that the expired cocktail makes the procedure more painful, a claim disputed by lawyers representing inmates who continue to be put to death with the drug.
Fueled by a lack of pharmacies willing to produce the execution drug, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice decided to extend the expiration dates of their stockpiles.
Six convicted Texas inmates made headlines after they filed a lawsuit against the authority last year, arguing that drug use violated the US Constitution’s statutes against cruel and unusual punishment.
But as the lawsuit made its way through the courts, inmates who signed the case, including convicted killers Wesley Ruiz, John Balentine, Gary Green, Arthur Brown Jr and Robert Fratta, were executed by the same authority that they pursue.
But long before that, in 2010, it emerged that several states were sourcing drugs from a one-man basement pharmacy called “Dream Pharma.”
When it became known that the drugs had been used by Arizona officials to execute convicted killer Jeffrey Landrigan, the London factory claimed it had no idea the drugs were going to be used at that time. END.
Jeffrey Landrigan, pictured, was executed over a decade ago in Arizona with lethal injection drugs believed to have been purchased from a basement laboratory in London.
Five Texas death row inmates, including Arthur Brown Jr (left), Robert Fratta (center left), John Balentine (center right) and Gary Green (right), were executed after be joined in a lawsuit against the safety of lethal injection drugs used to kill them
Oklahoma became the first state to execute a prisoner with the drug pentobarbital, despite its intended use as an anesthetic for vets. Pictured: The stretcher in the execution chamber at Oklahoma State Penitentiary
Critics of the US death row system say it violated Constitutional limits on ‘cruel and unusual punishment’
The ‘mad hunt’ for drugs is underpinned by a shortage of production, with the problem becoming so severe that in 2012 the Idaho Department of Corrections was accused of buying its drugs with a suitcase full of drugs. money in a Walmart parking lot, according to the Idaho Press.
According to a lawsuit, officials paid more than $10,000 after flying a chartered plane to Takoma, Washington to retrieve them, before failing to ‘properly store’ the drugs before they were used to execute Richard Leavitt just a month later in June.
The crisis has spread to states across the country, with Arkansas also facing a successful lawsuit from medical supply company McKesson in 2017 after it allegedly lied about buying a cocktail of drugs.
Ahead of a historic killing spree that would have seen eight prisoners executed in 11 days, Mckesson claimed the Arkansas Department of Corrections obtained its products illegally using “false pretenses, trickery and bad faith”.
Oklahoma instead turned to pentobarbital, the drug currently at the center of the Texas death row scandal. In 2011, it became the first state to execute a prisoner with the drug, despite its intended use as an anesthetic for vets.
“The drugs used in the executions are all life-saving drugs that were never designed or intended to end the lives of prisoners,” said Blaire Andres, head of death penalty projects at the advocacy organization. Human Rights Reprieve, at DailyMail.com.
“Enforcement states recognize that if people knew what really happens in the death chamber, support for capital punishment would drop to unsustainable levels.
“So states go to great lengths to hide the horrific reality of the death penalty in plain sight.
“States have also increasingly turned to covert and illegal tactics in their pursuit of executions, obtaining drugs from disreputable suppliers or insisting on using expired pharmaceuticals.”
Wesley Ruiz was one of five Texas death row inmates who were put to death with the same lethal injection drugs they are suing
Five Texas death row inmates, including John Balentine (left) and Gary Green (right), have been executed after joining a security lawsuit over the lethal injection drugs used to kill them.
Throughout this year, Texas has faced mounting pressure to explain why five inmates were executed despite an ongoing lawsuit filed by death row members themselves.
But the state’s ambivalence over safety surfaced five years earlier, when reports claimed the Department of Corrections had turned to a string of small pharmacies to stock up on pentobarbital. .
One of the small labs that developed the drug in Houston has reportedly met with regulators multiple times, allegedly pricing the drug alongside drugs destined for hospitals and bathroom cabinets across the state.
According to documents obtained by Newsthe state chose to rely on the pharmacy despite warnings from regulators about sloppy and dangerous work.
And the fears came to fruition in November 2016, when the lab allegedly sent a child to the emergency room after compounding the wrong cocktail of drugs, before falsifying quality control documents.
