Professional supply-chain refusal is strangling U.S. lethal executions

Evidence

States that retain the death penalty are finding that executions are more difficult to carry out (Eckholm & Zezima, 2011a). Domestic drug manufacturers refuse to supply drugs for executions (Lyman, 2013). The American Pharmacists Association voted to ban its members from taking part in executions by lethal injection (Goldschmidt, 2015). The European Union has banned the export of drugs used in executions (Ford, 2014). States are resorting to covert means of questionable legality to find the needed drugs and suppliers. Federally unapproved drugs imported from unlicensed foreign suppliers are confiscated (Eckholm, 2014). As states turn increasingly to unregulated compounding pharmacies for drugs, battles are being fought over the legality of these practices. Some states are flirting with the idea of granting suppliers anonymity by listing them as part of the execution team, whose identity is not revealed. To overcome drug makers’ refusal to supply drugs for executions, some states have enacted secrecy laws that conceal their suppliers and the drugs being used. These laws are being challenged on the constitutional grounds that secrecy prohibits evaluation of whether the method of execution is cruel and unusual punishment (Eckholm, 2014). The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on the legality of state secrecy laws. It is ironic to see states skirting the edge of illegality in conducting executions with trial-and-error drug combinations from secret sources. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2095

Categorization

• CANDY: The irony that death-penalty states now skirt the edge of illegality and use secrecy laws to keep executing using unapproved trial-and-error drugs is a striking conversation fact.
• SHARE: A professional-association refusing to supply drugs for executions turning states toward secret sources would interest someone following abolition politics or medical ethics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2095