In Missouri, the Director of the Department of Corrections tes­ti­fied that the state obtains its lethal injec­tion drugs by send­ing a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cial to anoth­er state with $11,000 in cash to pay a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy called The Apothecary Shoppe. The offi­cer then hand deliv­ers the drug to the depart­ment. At a leg­isla­tive hear­ing on February 10, George Lombardi of the DOC said pen­to­bar­bi­tal was obtained in Oklahoma by pay­ing in cash in order to main­tain the anonymi­ty of the phar­ma­cy. Also tes­ti­fy­ing was Jacob Luby, an attor­ney with the Death Penalty Litigation Center. Luby raised con­cerns that the drug would not be stored at the prop­er tem­per­a­ture in trans­port: ​“First, let’s address the fact that this drug is sup­posed to be kept frozen and not at room tem­per­a­ture,” Luby said. ​“We’ve got some­one dri­ving a drug across state lines after pur­chas­ing it in cash and deliv­er­ing it to the depart­ment and until a few weeks ago, we didn’t even know who was sell­ing us the drug.” Bills have been pro­posed in Missouri to require exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols to be more open to pub­lic scruti­ny. The Department of Corrections is cur­rent­ly exempt from that process. Concerns were also raised about exe­cu­tions occur­ring before appeals had been set­tled. Committee Chair Jay Barnes said, ​“If we have a sit­u­a­tion where the state is exe­cut­ing peo­ple while they still have legit­i­mate legal claims in court, that’s a seri­ous issue. I want to make sure we aren’t exe­cut­ing some­one because we are statu­to­ri­ly keep­ing them from the find­ing of fact that’s nec­es­sary for the case to continue.”

The hear­ings were held by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Accountability.

(C. Reischman, ​“DOC Hearing shows leg­isla­tive action on exe­cu­tions like­ly,” Missouri Times, February 10, 2014). See Lethal Injection and Recent Legislation.

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