Publications & Testimony

The assets of The Apothecary Shoppe, a Tulsa, Oklahoma compounding pharmacy that provided lethal injection drugs to Missouri, have been auctioned off after the company defaulted on its loans, and is being sold after admitting to nearly two thousand violations of pharmacy regulations, according to a report by BuzzFeed News. Inspectors from the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Oklahoma Board of Pharmacy found that the drug compounder had committed “significant” violations of pharmacy…

Bobby James Moore (pictured) faces execution in Texas after the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his claim of intellectual disability in September 2015, saying he failed to meet Texas’ “Briseño factors” (named after the Texas court decision that announced them), an unscientific seven-pronged test which a judge based on the character Lennie Smalls from John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” In doing so, the appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling that tracked the scientific…

The high cost of capital trials has put the death penalty under scrutiny in Arizona and Colorado. In Mohave County, Arizona, where two capital cases have already cost about $239,000 this fiscal year, County Supervisors have been told that the defense costs for trying these two cases and pursuing three other capital cases that are currently on appeal will be $380,000 this fiscal year, with comparable costs expected for next fiscal year. County Supervisors approved an expenditure of an additional…

Leonard Edloe (pictured), President of the American Pharmacists Association Foundation has urged Virginia lawmakers to reject Governor Terry McAuliffe’s proposal to conceal the identity of the state’s execution drug suppliers, saying that the plan “undermines everything our profession stands for, and is actually against the law.” In an op-ed in The Virginian-Pilot on the eve of a veto session in which the Virginia state legislature will consider the secrecy proposal, Edloe wrote: “Medicines are…

On April 13, the Tennessee House of Representatives joined the Tennessee Senate in unanimously approving a bill that would mandate the preservation of biological evidence in cases involving a death sentence. The House voted 94 – 0 in favor of the bill after the Senate had passed the bill on April 4 by a 31 – 0 vote. If the governor signs the bill, such evidence must be held until the defendant is executed, dies, or is released from prison. Destruction of evidence will be handled as criminal…

California death row prisoner Kevin Cooper (pictured), whose innocence claims recently spurred the American Bar Association to call for a reprieve, recently authored an article describing what is was like for him to experience nearly being executed on February 10, 2004. Cooper described the days leading up to his scheduled execution, which included round-the-clock monitoring, medical exams, and meetings with his attorneys. “My lawyers kept coming to see me and updating me on what the were doing…

UPDATE: The Supreme Court docket indicates that its conferencing of Mr. Buck’s case, originally set for April 22, has been rescheduled. The Court is now scheduled to considering the case on April 29. PREVIOUSLY: On April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to confer on whether to review the case of Duane Buck (pictured), who was sentenced to death in Harris County, Texas after a psychologist testified that he posed an increased risk of future dangerousness because he is black. In the case…

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections knew it had used an unauthorized drug in the execution of Charles Warner nearly six months before it almost repeated the mistake in the aborted execution of Richard Glossip. Oklahoma executed Warner on January 15, 2015. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal that three months later, in April, the state medical examiner submitted a report to the Department on Warner’s autopsy, showing that he had been executed using potassium acetate, in violation of…

Texas State Comptroller Glenn Hegar has rejected an application for compensation filed by death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown, asserting that the court proceedings leading to his release did not constitute a determination that he was “actually innocent.” Brown had applied for approximately $1.9 million in cash and annuity payments under Texas’ exoneration compensation law. Harris County prosecutors dismissed charges against Brown in June 2015, after he had spent a decade on death row for…

Georgia is preparing to execute Kenneth Fults (pictured) on April 12, following the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denial of his clemency application. Fults’ current lawyers presented evidence to the Board that Fults is intellectually disabled and “functions in the lowest 1 percent of the population.” They also argued that Fults’ trial lawyer failed to present this evidence to the jury, as well as extensive evidence that Fults endured a childhood of chronic abuse and torment in which he…