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Arkansas judge faces sanction for blocking lethal injection

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An Arkansas judge faces judicial sanction for blocking the state’s use of a lethal injection drug on the same day he pro- tested the death penalty out- side the governor’s mansion, reported The Associated Press.
The Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission charged Judge Wendell Griffen, a Pulaski County Circuit Judge, with violating ethics rules in June. The three- member panel cited the judge’s online and social media comments against the death penalty as evidence of an ethical violation.
Griffen asked a judicial ethics commission to dismiss the complaint against him in August.
“This is a case really about optics and not about ethics,” said Austin Porter Jr., Griffen’s attorney, during the commission hearing.
Porter also said the case “runs afoul” of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted judges to speak out on social and legal issues and a separate decision that bars excluding jurors from capital punishment cases based on their moral or religious objections.
Arkansas executed four inmates last year using lethal injection. Judge Griffen had blocked this method of execution earlier in the year, which led to the judicial commission’s charge of ethics violations.
The commission did not immediately issue a ruling on Griffen’s case but is expected to hold a full hearing this fall on its findings, during which it could advise the State Supreme Court to suspend or remove the judge.
Griffen has appealed the initial decision and asked for full review in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals pertaining to his case.

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Nebraska executes inmate using Fentanyl

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Despite being sued by a pharmaceutical company for alleged unauthorized use, the state of Nebraska was successful in executing a prisoner on death row using the addictive drug fentanyl, according to NPR News. Robert Dunham, head of the Death Penalty Information Center, believed the use of fentanyl—the first execution in the country using the chemical—was unusual.
“It’s somewhat ironic that at the same time the Justice Department and states are talking about how dangerous fentanyl is and how it’s created a national public health emergency that states are now turning to it as a supposedly safe way of killing prisoners,” Dunham said told NPR. Convicted of murder in 1980, Carey Dean Moore was sentenced to death and did not put up a legal fight against being injected with a lethal dose of the deadly opiate.

Oklahoma-Execution-Lawsuit

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But Fresenius Kabi, a German pharmaceutical company, challenged Moore’s execution in federal court according to NPR News.
Fresenius Kabi are the makers of potassium chloride and cisatracurium besylate, two of the four drugs used in the state’s execution cocktail, and filed a suit requesting that a temporary restraining order be granted on the grounds that the state of Nebraska may have purchased those drugs illegally.
The company commented that its drugs are only sold by authorized dealers who “contractually agreed to particular constraints, such as excluding sale to federal or state incarceration facilities.”
Nebraska has been vocal about the debate over the use of the two drugs in Moore’s execution. The state said after contacting a number of potential suppliers and six different states, the drug was supplied by a licensed pharmacy in the United States. Nebraska authorities claim that the drug was not obtained by fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.
Judge Richard Kopf denied the restraining order. He stated the claim that the drugs’ use would cause the company “irreparable injury” was “far too speculative,” allowing the state of Nebraska to complete the execution.
NET News reported that there have also been concerns by death-penalty abolitionists about the drug cisatracurium besylate, which causes paralysis.
“If in tortuous pain the paralysis would make the subject unable to respond,” NET News summarized.
Moore was given the first drug at 10:24 a.m. and pronounced dead by 10:47 a.m., according to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.
The Associated Press reported that while on the gurney, Moore turned his head and mouthed several words to his family, including “I love you.”
His execution was under heavy scrutiny by the ACLU Nebraska chapter.
“This execution of Carey Dean Moore does not comport with Nebraska’s proud tradition of open government,” director Danielle Conrad said to NPR. She also said it stood as the most dark chapter in Nebraska’s troubled history with the death penalty. The state had not executed an inmate since 1997.
PPI’s “Correctional Control: Incarceration and Supervision by State” is the first report to aggregate data on all types of correctional control nationwide.

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CDCR officials seek new execution drug

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California corrections officials are asking regulators to approve a revised method to carry out the death penalty.

“The new regulations would allow California’s Death Row inmates at San Quentin State Prison to be executed using one of two different drugs or choose the gas chamber,” The Associated Press reports.

Prison officials will select either the powerful barbiturate pentobarbital or thiopental for each execution “depending on which one is available.” Opponents argue officials are trying to work around a nationwide shortage of these drugs because manufacturers are not making them readily available, according to the AP.

Correctional officials submitted the revised regulations to the state’s lawyers and are following the normal regulatory process until a California Supreme Court ruling intended to speed up executions becomes final.

The state high court upheld a voter approved measure to speed up the death penalty. Approval by state regulators for a one-drug method of execution would be the next step according to the AP.

All of the legal wrangling came about after Kent Scheidegger, director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, sued the state to pressure state officials to adopt new execution regulations.

Scheidegger acknowledged that it is a slow regulatory process, and the state is proceeding cautiously. “But I can’t say that being cautious is a bad thing, because they know they’re going to be sued. They always are,” he said.

The AP reported, “There may be other legal challenges to the final rules.”

However, executions still can’t resume until state and federal judges lift longstanding injunctions that applied to the state’s old execution methods, it was reported. Initially, the state proposed using one of four drugs but dropped two of them after opponents said those drugs had never been used in executions.

Many death penalty opponents questioned whether the new drugs would be safe and effective, the story revealed.

Opponents are already objecting to the new method. For instance, the new rules allow state officials to obtain dangerous drugs from compounding pharmacies, which do not face the same approval process for their products that large manufacturers face, the AP concluded.

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