Lethal Injection

On May 22, 2025, Tennessee exe­cut­ed Oscar Smith by lethal injec­tion, mark­ing the state’s first exe­cu­tion in five years despite a pend­ing law­suit chal­leng­ing the state’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­col that relies on one drug — pen­to­bar­bi­tal. Other death row pris­on­ers and attor­neys for Mr. Smith had urged Governor Bill Lee to grant a reprieve, cit­ing an upcom­ing January 2026 tri­al that will deter­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. They…

Benjamin Ritchie’s exe­cu­tion in Indiana on May 20, 2025, has raised new con­cerns about the use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal after defense coun­sel report­ed their client dis­played an unusu­al phys­i­cal reac­tion after being inject­ed with the drug. But because Indiana offi­cials bar media wit­ness­es from observ­ing exe­cu­tions, the pub­lic has no inde­pen­dent wit­ness reports on what tran­spired. Steve Schutte, an attor­ney for Mr. Ritchie, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that Mr. Ritchie…

In this month’s pod­cast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Corinna Barrett Lain, the S.D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the recent­ly pub­lished book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. Ms. Lain’s new book chal­lenges a wide­ly held assump­tion that lethal injec­tion is a pain­less, reg­u­lat­ed, and medically-sound…

The Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) has admit­ted to spend­ing $200,000 on lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion drugs since 2023, all of which have since expired with­out use. Josh Tewalt, the for­mer direc­tor of IDOC said in recent court fil­ings that the drugs in IDOC’s pos­ses­sion expired because of repeat­ed delays asso­ci­at­ed with sched­ul­ing an exe­cu­tion. Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic, an IDOC spokesper­son, told the Idaho Statesman that the depart­ment does not currently have…