Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe rejected a bill that would have employed the electric chair as the state’s method of execution if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. Instead, he offered amendments that would permit the Commonwealth’s Department of Corrections to enter into confidential contracts to obtain execution drugs from compounding pharmacies, whose identities would be concealed from the public. His proposal is similar to legislation he backed last year that failed because of concerns about its secrecy provisions. McAuliffe’s amendments will go before the Virginia legislature during their veto session, which begins April 20. Under Virginia law, the legislature may accept the amendments by a simple majority vote or override the governor’s action again passing the unamended original bill by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of the legislature. If there is insufficient support for either option, the original bill returns to the Governor where he can veto it, sign it, or allow it to become law without his signature. Many states have adopted secrecy policies as they seek alternative sources of lethal injection drugs, but a Missouri judge recently ordered that state to reveal the sources of its execution drugs. The amendment proposed by Gov. McAuliffe states that pharmacies’ identifying information, “shall be confidential, shall be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act . . . and shall not be subject to discovery or introduction as evidence in any civil proceeding unless good cause is shown.” Virginia law currently directs condemned prisoners to choose between lethal injection and the electric chair, but the bill as initially approved by the legislature would have given the state authority to use the electric chair if lethal injection drugs were deemed to be unavailable, even if the prisoner had selected lethal injection.

(L. Vozzella, “McAuliffe guts Virginia’s electric-chair bill,” The Washington Post, April 11, 2016.) Read Governor McAuliffe’s amendments here. See Lethal Injection.

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