Deborah Denno quoted in KUT News about how the Texas Department of Criminal Justice says it is exploring the use of alternate drugs in executions, including a pair of drugs used in a controversial execution in Ohio: midazolam and hydromorphone.
It was the first time in the United States that someone was executed with a combination of those two drugs, according to law professor Deborah Denno at Fordham University, who has been researching lethal injection issues for twenty years.
Denno says attorneys for death row inmates could challenge executions based on the use of those drugs.
“I think the challenge could take a number of bases, but I think the key one is the cruel and unusual punishment clause,” Denno said in a telephone interview. “That whoever is being injected with these drugs could suffer in the way that Dennis McGuire did.”
The entire story aired on KUT News on February 12, 2014.