The Texas Department of Criminal Justice [official website] sued [complaint, PDF] the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [official website] on Wednesday after the FDA banned a shipment [JURIST report] of lethal injection drugs to prison officials. Texas argued that the lethal injection drugs are lawful and comply with FDA standards, and that the FDA “erroneously concluded” that the drugs violate 21 U.S.C. § 355(a) [text]. The ban applies to sodium thiopental and thiopental sodium, which Texas argues are the same drug, despite a 2011 FDA document which provided for, “admissibility of all imports of sodium thiopental intended to be shipped to correctional facilities.” According to the complaint, there are over 200 offenders in Texas awaiting execution through lethal injection. Texas requested the District Court for the Southern District of Texas [official website] to declare the FDA’s action unlawful and to set aside the import ban rule.

The death penalty continues to be a point of contention across the United States. 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].