FDA prevents lethal injection drug shipment to Texas News
FDA prevents lethal injection drug shipment to Texas

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [official website] finalized [Houston Public Media report] their decision on Thursday to not allow the Texas prison officials to receive a shipment of lethal injection drugs that were originally seized in July 2015. The FDA filed their decision with the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas [official website]. The shipment contained 1000 vials of sodium thiopental. State law allows Texas to withhold the identity of the supplier of the drug. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has called the seizure unjustified. The FDA has stated that the drugs were misbranded and unapproved new drugs. The drugs are believed [Reuters report] to be from India and were also meant to be used in Arizona.

The death penalty continues to be a point of contention across the United States. In March nine Arkansas death row inmates filed [JURIST report] a suit to stop their execution. In February the Mississippi house approved a bill [JURIST report] allowing firing squad executions. In January Ohio’s lethal injection protocol was deemed [JURIST report] unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In November the legal status of the death penalty was upheld [JURIST report] by state referendum in Oklahoma, Nebraska and California. In September executions in Oklahoma were put on a two-year hiatus so Oklahoma can reevaluate its lethal injection procedures [JURIST report] following a botched execution and several drug mix-ups in the past two years. In December a report by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the use of capital punishment in the US is at a 20-year low [JURIST report].