The desperation of the State of Missouri to keep executions churning is starting to get embarrassing. At a time when the rest of the nation is experiencing the lowest number of executions ever, the Show Me State scheduled three executions in three months. Missouri has proven it has an insatiable appetite for state killings and is willing to execute by any means necessary – even if it’s illegal, unethical and barbaric.
I reported in a previous column how Missouri was going to become the first state to use the controversial drug Propofol for lethal injections. The general public was first introduced to Propofol as the drug that killed pop star Michael Jackson.
The medical community was furious! It’s is a community that is supposed to be saving lives, not taking them (at least not deliberately). It also feared that the drug would be in short supply once execution-happy states like Missouri, Texas and Florida got their hands on it.
Just because it has done a lot of killing doesn’t mean that Missouri gets it right. A federal judge stopped executions for a year because of the state’s sloppy implementation of its execution protocol.
The protocol has changed several times under a cloak of secrecy. This is because after the public got wind of the flawed skills of the doctor who administered the anesthesia and the judge suspended executions, Missouri legislators fast-tracked a bill that would make it illegal to expose the name of the person who administers the drugs for lethal injection.
When European companies that manufactured the drugs the U.S. started to use for lethal injections banned their sale for executions, Missouri moved to Propofol. Not so fast. The staunch death penalty opponents in Europe manufacture 90 percent of all Propofol used in the world. Missouri had not acquired its supply on the up and up and eventually was forced to return its 20 vials to the company.
Consequently, the state was again forced to change its drug of choice for executions. It now uses pentobarbital, a drug used to euthanize animals. The state has executed two people using this drug despite the whirl of litigation surrounding it. Given the recent botched execution in Ohio, this is no time for short cuts or ambiguity.
Thanks to the investigative reporting of the St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio, the public now knows that the pentobarbital supplier is a compounding pharmacy in Oklahoma that is not licensed in Missouri. This is illegal, not to mention these fake pharmacies are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). No one knows what they’ve cooked up because the Department of Corrections, Gov. Nixon and Attorney General Koster are all mum.
With an execution scheduled for January 29, something’s gotta give. Republican lawmakers, led by state Rep. Rick Brattin, have introduced a bill to use a firing squad, thereby eliminating all of this fuss over which drugs to use.
Missouri citizens, including those who favor the death penalty, need to demand a halt to executions until we can determine what’s really going on. A more objective bi-partisan group of state legislators are asking the serious questions and are looking to temporarily suspend executions until they get the right answers. We need to support those efforts.
