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If death is one of life’s inevitables, so are lawsuits when it comes to the death penalty.
Texas has 317 convicted murderers on death row, but because of a company’s decision last week to stop making the key drug for lethal injections, Texas only has enough of the potion to execute two.
Consequently, Texas and 32 other states will be watching closely as Ohio prepares to execute Johnnie Baston. They will be watching not only to see how well the substitute drug works, but how entangling the legal battle is going to be.
Baston, 36, convicted of killing a wig shop owner in 1994, is scheduled to arrive at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility’s “Death House”on March 10. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll be strapped to a gurney, allowed to make a final statement, and injected with a dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital.
The drug, chemically similar to a drug used to euthanize horses, is the latest flashpoint in the debate over the death penalty. Texas, which has the busiest death row in the country, expects to run out of its supply of lethal drugs in March.
“The supply expires in March, so we’ll have to look to some sort of alternative,” said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Jason Clarke. “We’ll likely end up changing the drug. We’ll look to what other states use successfully.”
Too bad hanging went out of style in Texas…
Texas avoids the possible embarrassment of future reversals of death row convictions, with little or dodgy evidence. By killing off as many of its poorer death row inmates, before they can fund proper DNA testing.
BTW, why is it that when a state authority manages to burn thru their supply of controlled drugs, no red flags get raised? But whenever some person, suffering from extreme pain, goes thru a large supply of pain medicines, they get tagged as a drug pusher? No matter if their doctor signs off on their valid need. Maybe Texas ought to be proving their valid need to waste so many inmates, with whatever means. Besides, they’re only killing off the killers that Texas Millionaires hire to off their ex-wives for them. Once gone, the millionaire can appeal, and claim some bogus reason for the killing, that the contract killer isn’t around to refute. How convenient.