Deborah Denno quoted in The New Republic about emails obtained from the Ohio government that reveal some of the state’s internal debates and concerns about midazolam and hydromorphone could create “a distasteful and disgusting spectacle” and demonstrate how the drugs still spread across the country, revealing the lengths states will go to in order to carry out death sentences.
Dershwitz’s decision will make it more difficult for states to defend their execution protocols in court. “He has been the prime states’ expert since this issue started gaining traction in the 2000s,” says Deborah Denno, a professor and lethal-injection expert at Fordham Law School. “He has always been at the top of states’ list, if not the only one.”
Montana has asked the court for more time to prepare its case for trial: Dershwitz, it said, was “the sole witness for the State Defendants.”
Correction: The article originally quoted Deborah Denno as saying that Dershwitz had been states’ main expert witness “since this issue started gaining traction in the early 2000s and even before then.” Denno meant that the lethal injection issue had started gaining traction even before the early 2000s, not that Dershwitz had worked as an expert witness before then. Dershwitz first served as an expert witness in 2003 and the quote has been amended to reflect this.
Read the entire New Republic article.