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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