Yesterday Texas planned to use a new drug for the execution of death row prisoner Cleve Foster. Last night Foster was granted a stay while the state reviews his case.  Like many states, it is experimenting with its lethal injection process due to a shortage of the sedative sodium thiopental.

The new method was shrouded in secrecy until records revealed Texas prison officials chose a replacement execution drug, pentobarbital, without consulting a medical professional and relied on news articles to help them choose a sedative for the state’s three-drug lethal injection cocktail that is intended to prevent pain, inhibit muscle movement, and stop the inmate’s heart. On Friday, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency demanded Kentucky and Tennessee hand over their supply of the drug because of concerns it may have been illegally imported.

Read the rest at Democracy Now!

FrugiVoice:

Do you think states should be allowed to test drugs on inmates?

Do you think inmates should still have constitutional rights, even though they might be on death row?

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3 Comments

  1. Prisoners give up their rights when they commit an act against society. I have no problem with testing drugs, health foods, water, or whatever they come up with people who are going to die anyway. Human testing can be humane, but these criminals weren’t thinking about being humane when they did whatever they did.

    I feel that if pharmaceutical companies did more test on criminals that death due to overdose of law abiding citizens would go down…

  2. Why not put these criminals to work instead of death by any method. We have highways and buildings to clean and repair… Then we can house them inside and give them education on how to live without violence!!!

  3. Denise, They used to do that. Chaingang? But it was considered SLAVE labor.

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