Lethal Injection

Recent report­ing by The Intercept con­firms a sto­ry aired in April 2024 on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver iden­ti­fy­ing Connecticut-based Absolute Standards as the source of the exe­cu­tion drugs used in 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in 2020 and 2021. Absolute Standards pro­duces mate­ri­als for cal­i­brat­ing research equip­ment, but in 2018, it applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration to be reg­is­tered as a bulk pro­duc­er of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the anes­thet­ic used in fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and in many…

A new report issued April 17, 2024 by the UK-based inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Reprieve found racial dis­par­i­ties in the occur­rence of botched exe­cu­tions in the United States. As report­ed in The Guardian, Reprieve ana­lyzed all lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions between 1976 and 2023. It chron­i­cled 73 con­firmed botched pro­ce­dures and found that 8% of exe­cu­tions of Black peo­ple were botched (37 times out of 465 exe­cu­tions), com­pared with 4% for white peo­ple (28 out of…

During the April 7, 2024, episode of ​“Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver focused on ​“grim devel­op­ments” in the death penal­ty since his last seg­ment cov­er­ing lethal injec­tion in 2019. Since then, 91 peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed, includ­ing 13 fed­er­al pris­on­ers dur­ing for­mer President Donald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion. ​“Our fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have con­tin­ued to pur­sue ques­tion­ably legal and def­i­nite­ly hor­ri­fy­ing ways, that, again, I would argue they shouldn’t be doing at all,” Mr. Oliver…

On February 16, 2024, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed Senate Bill 109, Corrections Modifications, into law, ​“amend[ing] pro­vi­sions relat­ed to the [Utah] Department of Corrections.” S.B. 109, described as an ​“uncon­tro­ver­sial” leg­isla­tive mea­sure, was belat­ed­ly amend­ed to include a pro­vi­sion pre­vent­ing the pub­lic dis­clo­sure of ​“iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion” about indi­vid­u­als involved in car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, the pro­cure­ment of drugs and sup­plies need­ed for exe­cu­tions, and any identifying…