John Oliver’s ​“Last Week Tonight” Criticizes Execution Secrecy Laws and ​“Sketchy” Procurement of Pentobarbital by Federal Government

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 assert­ed. He explained that the increased dif­fi­cul­ty in obtain­ing drugs required for lethal injec­tion has pushed law­mak­ers to enact secre­cy statutes that pro­tect the iden­ti­ties of busi­ness­es and indi­vid­u­als involved in drug devel­op­ment and pro­cure­ment. ​“At every lev­el, those who car­ry out exe­cu­tions crave secre­cy,” said Mr. Oliver. Because of these prac­tices, sev­er­al states have tried to ​“source drugs from some pret­ty sketchy sup­pli­ers,” which Mr. Oliver claims ​“is a prob­lem because when drugs are taint­ed or not for­mu­lat­ed at the prop­er dosage, exe­cu­tions become a pro­tract­ed night­mare of suf­fer­ing, which is both hor­ri­fy­ing, and also, unconstitutional.”

While President Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion offered ​“san­i­tized accounts” of all 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions, Mr. Oliver says that autop­sies of two exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als revealed that the pris­on­ers’ lungs were ​“twice as heavy as they should be, indi­cat­ing ​‘pul­monary ede­ma,’ where flu­id rush­es into the lungs and air­ways,” caus­ing a drown­ing or suf­fo­cat­ing sen­sa­tion with­out adequate anesthetization.

In light of these prob­lem­at­ic find­ings, Mr. Oliver ques­tioned where the Trump admin­is­tra­tion obtained the pen­to­bar­bi­tal it used. Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sub­mit­ted by jour­nal­ists on Mr. Oliver’s team, Last Week Tonight revealed that it believes that Absolute Standards, a Hamden, Connecticut based com­pa­ny, pro­vid­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with the pen­to­bar­bi­tal used in the fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. The prob­lem, Mr. Oliver alleges, is that while Absolute Standards has been reg­is­tered with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) since August 2018 to pro­duce pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the drugs are not autho­rized for human con­sump­tion. According to Mr. Oliver, ​“under the law, com­pa­nies that make drugs need to be reg­is­tered with the FDA, and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion claimed, before the exe­cu­tions, that its sup­pli­er was ​‘prop­er­ly reg­is­tered.’” An addi­tion­al FOIA request sub­mit­ted to the Food and Drug Administration revealed that the orga­ni­za­tion was ​“unable to locate any records respon­sive” to the request, and Absolute Standards ​“has not been inspect­ed by the FDA.” In 2020, Reuters also report­ed that Absolute Standards may have been the source of exe­cu­tions drugs, but the company’s direc­tor, Stephen Arpie, did not con­firm and said the com­pa­ny does not always know what is done with their product.

“All this secre­cy is also meant to pro­tect us — the peo­ple in whose name [exe­cu­tions are] done — from con­fronting the hor­ror of what the death penal­ty tru­ly is,” Mr. Oliver said. ​“Because whether it’s nitro­gen gas, or an IV injec­tion of drugs, or a fir­ing squad, or an elec­tric chair, or being pressed with weights, it’s all bru­tal.” Mr. Oliver called on President Biden to com­mute the death sen­tences of all 42 indi­vid­u­als on fed­er­al death row to sen­tences of life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. ​“But beyond com­mut­ing sen­tences, [President] Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion could do much more. It could inves­ti­gate the legal­i­ty of the fed­er­al government’s drug pur­chas­es from Absolute Standards…” added Mr. Oliver, who also said state leg­is­la­tures should elim­i­nate secre­cy laws and pro­mote trans­paren­cy. In clos­ing, Mr. Oliver states that ​“if the gov­ern­ment is going to give itself the pow­er to exe­cute its own cit­i­zens — which, for the final time, I strong­ly believe that it should not — then I want to see where the drugs come from, who’s mak­ing them, and relent­less scruti­ny of every part of this process. Because all this is being done in our name, and far too often, in secret. And we should get a voice to express how we feel about that.”