Deborah Denno comments to the Austin American-Statesman on how a suit filed in an Austin state court by two prisoners on death row contends that Texas’ new execution protocol — replacing sodium thiopental with pentobarbital as one of three drugs used in lethal injections — violated the state Administrative Procedures Act.
“Lack of transparency and the problems that ensue from it constitute one of the largest challenges to ensuring constitutionally viable lethal injection procedures, said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and a nationally recognized expert on the death penalty and injection.
“The State of Texas’s under-the-table method for dealing with a drug shortage is unacceptable and adds to the ongoing pattern of debacles the state has experienced since its first-ever lethal injection execution in 1982.”
The entire story appeared in the Austin American-Statesman on March 29, 2011.
