Deborah Denno comments to the Austin American-Statesman on how Texas will change the three-drug cocktail it uses to execute condemned criminals, switching from the difficult-to-get sodium thiopental to pentobarbital.
Deborah Denno , a Fordham Law School professor who is one of the nation’s leading experts on death penalty issues, questioned the drug switch.
“In a continuing desperate measure to execute, Texas has followed in the footsteps of Oklahoma by switching drugs not in an effort to make executions more humane, but simply to make the execution process more feasible, irrespective of the unknown consequences,” she said. “This lemming effect has created a decades-long pattern of lethal injection botches in which (state corrections departments) try to remain one step ahead of lawsuits.”
Read the entire Austin American-Statesman story.