USA NEWS

Nebraska group says it can stop death penalty repeal

An organization campaigning to reinstate Nebraska’s death penalty after lawmakers repealed it in May said Wednesday it has collected more than enough signatures to suspend the law before it goes into effect and place it before voters in 2016.
Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, which was heavily financed by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts and his family, said it had gathered 166,692 signatures from all 93 of the state’s counties. Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature had voted to repeal capital punishment over the objection of Ricketts, becoming the 1st traditionally conservative state to do so in 42 years.
The pro-death penalty group needed roughly 57,000 valid signatures from registered voters to force a statewide referendum, and double that number to immediately halt the death penalty repeal going into effect. They appear to have exceeded the 10 % of registered voters hurdle needed to block repeal pending a November 2016 ballot measure on the issue.
“Nebraskans sent a strong message about crime and punishment in our state by signing this petition in extraordinary numbers,” said state treasurer and former attorney general Don Stenberg, a co-chair of the petition drive.
The announcement came just before the repeal law was set to go into effect on Sunday, but the signatures still need to be verified. The petitions now go to the Nebraska secretary of state’s office, which will forward them to counties to verify the signatures in a process that will take about 40 days.
Republican Attorney General Doug Peterson, who supports the death penalty, said in a statement that the signatures are “presumptively valid” until determined otherwise. Stenberg said no one will know the exact number of valid signatures for at least a month, but the state constitution makes clear that petitions go into effect on the day they’re submitted.
Even if the law is suspended, Nebraska currently has no way to execute any of the 10 men on death row because its lacks 2 of the 3 required lethal injection drugs and has struggled to obtain them legally. The state paid $54,400 in May to order the drugs from a broker in India, but federal authorities have said they can’t be legally imported.
Nebraska lawmakers voted by the narrowest possible margin, 30-19, to override Ricketts’ veto. Ricketts assailed the Legislature as out of touch with the wishes of most residents. The repeal vote was helped by an unusual coalition of conservative state senators and more traditional death penalty opponents who had fought unsuccessfully for decades to eliminate the punishment. Some conservatives said they opposed it for religious and moral reasons, while others cast it as an inefficient government program that wastes tax money.
“What the Nebraska Legislature did is going to have an effect,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, whose group takes no stance on the death penalty but often criticizes how it’s administered. “The message that conservative legislators can reach across the aisle with moderate and liberal legislators – that message is still there and still resonates.”
Nebraska hasn’t executed an inmate since 1997, and has never done so using the state’s current 3-drug lethal injection protocol.
The state was the 19th to abolish capital punishment, as has the District of Columbia, while the death penalty is legal in 31 states and for some federal crimes. The number of executions in the United States has gradually declined in recent years and only a handful of states led by Texas regularly put inmates to death.
The announcement of the number of signatures caps an 82-day petition drive backed by Ricketts and his father, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts. The governor had given $200,000 to Nebraskans for the Death Penalty as of the last filing deadline on July 31, while his father had donated $100,000. The group raised a total of more than $652,000 from 40 individual donors and seven groups classified as businesses, political action committees and other entities.
The largest donation in July came from the conservative, Washington-based Judicial Crisis Network, which gave $200,000. Nebraskans for the Death Penalty relied on a combination of paid and volunteer petition circulators, and was aided by an Arizona-based strategist who specializes in ballot campaigns.
Source: Associated Press, August 28, 2015

 

High court won’t rehear death penalty case

The Supreme Court refused Friday to reconsider the death-row appeals of 3 Oklahoma prisoners whose pending executions by lethal injection were upheld by the justices in June.
Without comment, the court denied a petition filed by the prisoners’ lawyers that would have turned the case into one testing the overall constitutionality of the death penalty.
The justices ruled 5-4 on June 29 that Oklahoma can use the sedative midazolam as part of a 3-drug lethal injection protocol, despite contentions that it may not render prisoners completely unconscious and incapable of feeling pain. The court’s majority said the inmates failed to suggest any better alternative.
But the decision included a sweeping dissent from Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg that questioned whether capital punishment is no longer constitutional. The 2 liberal justices cited scores of death-row exonerations, racial and geographic disparities, decades-long delays between sentencing and executions and a trend away from capital punishment in courts and states.
Breyer, who wrote the dissent, urged the court to hear a case in the near future on whether the death penalty violates the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The court ruled that way in 1972, resulting in a 4-year moratorium on executions, but reversed itself in 1976.
“It would be appropriate for the court to use this case to address the constitutionality of the death penalty, because the outcome will turn not on facts specific to any single litigant, but on circumstances common to the administration of the death penalty,” attorneys for death-row inmates Richard Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin Cole said.
A similar effort was mounted in early July by Missouri prisoner David Zink, but the Supreme Court refused to delay his execution, and he was put to death July 14. Barring a last-minute reprieve, Glossip is scheduled to die Sept. 16, with Grant and Cole to follow later this year.
A more likely candidate for the Supreme Court to consider whether the death penalty is constitutional will come before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Monday. In that case, a federal district judge already has declared California’s death penalty unconstitutional because of long delays, inadequate funding for defense lawyers, and the lack of a lethal injection protocol.
The June Supreme Court case concerned the specific drug used by Oklahoma and some other states to sedate prisoners before lethal drugs are administered. While Florida has used midazolam with apparent success, three executions in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma resulted in condemned prisoners gasping and writhing on their gurneys.
The high court’s 5-member conservative majority ruled that states may continue to uses midazolam because the defendants could not suggest an alternative – a burden that the court’s 4 liberal members criticized in a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Source: USA Today, August 28, 201

2 Colorado juries reject death penalty in a month: Will Colorado ever execute a criminal again?

DENVER – Two Colorado juries have rejected the death penalty for mass murderers in a single month. Add to that the governor’s controversial decision to grant clemency to the last killer who was supposed to be executed, and it begs a question: Will Colorado ever use the death penalty again?
Jurors in Arapahoe County, the only Colorado County that currently has killers awaiting the death penalty, could not unanimously agree to sentence the Aurora movie theater gunman to die by lethal injection. Instead, the man who killed 12 people and wounded 70 others during a movie premiere was sentenced to 12 lifetimes in prison plus 3,318 years — one of the longest prison terms in history.
Just days later, a Denver County jury decided that mitigating factors were sufficient to stop the process in pursuit of the death penalty for the man who stabbed five people to death in a bar that was subsequently set on fire. The mitigating factors included an abusive childhood.
“The question everybody is asking is if these cases didn’t justify handing out the death penalty, executing somebody, what case could possible merit that?” said former Douglas County judge Jim Miller.
Miller says concerns ranging from the cost of trying a death penalty case to morality are fueling opposition.
“I think a combination of those factors make it very unlikely that you’ll anyone executed in Colorado again,” said Miller.
Yet, just last month, a poll found Colorado voters wanted death, two-to-one, in the theater shooting case.
“I think it’s worth a conversation, but the idea that Coloradans have moved on from the death penalty is not accurate,” said Arapahoe district attorney George Brauchler, who prosecuted the theater shooting case.
Under Colorado law, juries must unanimously agree to impose death sentences. In the theater case, one juror was steadfast against the death penalty and at least one juror sided with Lewis’ defense team’s presentation of mitigating factors.
The Colorado legislature last tried to repeal the death penalty in 2013. Supporters of repeal argued that the death penalty is applied unfairly and arbitrarily. But the bill died in committee as Democratic lawmakers wavered on doing away with capital punishment. Governor Hickenlooper, a fellow Democrat, had signaled he might veto the bill. His office had issued a statement saying, “the governor has conflicting feelings about the death penalty. Those feelings are still unresolved.”
Death penalty facts:
  • No Denver jury has sentenced someone to death since 1986.
  • Colorado has not executed anyone since 1997.
  • State law requires the Colorado Supreme Court to review all death sentences and defense appeals typically last more than a decade. Afterward, the court that oversaw the case must issue a death warrant indicating the week in which the lethal injection would occur.
  • Colorado law dictates that the death penalty can only be carried out by means of a “continuous intravenous injection of a lethal quantity of sodium thiopental or other equally or more effective substance.”
Three other convicted killers are currently awaiting executions in Colorado, but they were all sentenced between 5 and 20 years ago.
Sir Mario Owens: A jury sentenced Sir Mario Owens to death on June 16, 2008 for the 2005 ambush murders of Vivian Wolfe and her fiance, Javad Marshall-Fields, who were gunned down in their car at an Aurora intersection. Javad Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify against Owens’ friend Robert Ray.
Robert Ray: A jury sentenced Robert Ray, a 23-year-old drug dealer, to death on June 8, 2009, for planned and ordering the killings of Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancée Vivian Wolfe.
Nathan Dunlap: He was sentenced to death in 1996 for shooting to death four employees at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant in 1993. In May 2013, Dunlap was three months from a scheduled execution when Gov. John Hickenlooper granted him a controversial “temporary reprieve.” In a move that outraged Dunlap’s victims, the governor said, “Colorado’s system of capital punishment is imperfect and inherently inequitable.” While it’s unlikely that Hickenlooper will reconsider executing Dunlap, a future governor could agree to carry out the execution.
Source: 7News Denver, Marc Stewart, Phil Tenser, Alan Gathright, August 28, 2015

 

Ohio Mom Indicted for Murder of Sons Could Face Death Penalty

August 27, 2015

An Ohio woman accused of killing her 3 sons over a 13-month period out of jealousy at the attention her husband paid them has been indicted on aggravated murder charges and could face the death penalty.

Aggravated murder charges against Brittany Pilkington in Bellefontaine were announced Tuesday by the Logan County prosecutor.

Investigators say the 23-year-old smothered 2 sons, 1 in July 2014 and the other on April 6. Authorities took custody of her 3rd son after he was born 3 months ago, but a judge allowed him to return home because there wasn’t conclusive evidence the older boys had been killed. The 3rd son died Aug. 18.

Pilkington’s mother said Pilkington told her in a jailhouse phone call that she’s innocent.

Pilkington is jailed on $1 million bond.

(source: Associated Press)

Feds Weigh Whether to Seek Death Penalty for Charleston Killer

The federal government’s decision about whether authorities should seek the death penalty against the man accused of killing 9 African-Americans in Charleston is still likely months away, South Carolina U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles said in a recent interview with Free Times.
The federal case against alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof got off to a surprising start last month when Roof’s lawyer, David Bruck, indicated to a federal judge in Charleston that Roof wished to plead guilty to the 33 federal hate crime charges levied against him. Prosecutors allege that Roof outlined his hate-filled worldview in a racist online manifesto and that he told others he hoped to incite a “race war” with his actions.
However, Bruck told the judge that he couldn’t advise his client on whether to enter that plea until he knows whether Roof could face a death sentence. A temporary “not guilty” plea was entered on Roof’s behalf.
The 21-year-old also faces murder charges from state prosecutors. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett A. Wilson has not yet said whether her office plans to pursue the death penalty in the case.
Nettles says once his office decides on its recommendation, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch would weigh it before coming to a final decision. The South Carolina prosecutor, an Obama appointee who has held the post since 2010, called the process and decision “extraordinarily complex,” noting that generally “enormous deference is given to victims.”
In this case, many family members have garnered worldwide admiration for their forgiveness of Roof.
“I have never witnessed such a pronounced expression of hope or grace,” Nettles says. “A lot of the victims have already expressed forgiveness that is unfathomable.”
Along with interviews with family members of victims, Nettles, a former public defender who has worked on capital cases from the other side of the courtroom, says the federal government’s protocol puts in place “layers of review to balance competing interests.”
A Department of Justice spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Bruck, Roof’s attorney, also could not be reached.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that seeks to provide unbiased information and analysis of the death penalty, says federal prosecutors will weigh several factors in making a decision. (Bruck, Roof’s lawyer, is on the board of the center.)
The wishes of victims’ families, the cost of a capital trial and whether local prosecutors can seek the death penalty themselves are big factors, he says.
Roof’s potential capital charges differ from the ones against Boston terrorist Dzokhar Tsarnaev, Dunham says. State authorities in Massachusetts cannot pursue the death penalty because capital punishment has been ruled unconstitutional there.
Dunham also says that Roof’s indication that he would prefer to plead guilty would save both the federal government and the shooting victims’ families a prolonged trial and hefty costs.
“He’s expressed willingness to plead guilty, and if the death penalty were off the table that would give the family members of the homicide victims an opportunity to give their statements without cross-examination or interruption during sentencing proceeding,” Dunham says. “They could say what they had to say without being subjected to re-traumatization through a trial.”
The federal government also has tools the state does not – the ability to put a permanent muzzle on Roof. As they have done with Tsarnaev, “special administrative measures” could be imposed on Roof, meaning his contact with the outside world would be severely limited, Dunham says. In essence, Roof could be barred from publicly expressing racist views.
“The federal prosecution has the ability to essentially make Dylann Roof disappear from view,” Dunham says. “His ability to become a symbol for white supremacists disappears.”
A trial on Roof’s state murder charges has been set for July 2016. No further hearings have yet been scheduled by federal prosecutors in the case.
Source: free-times.com, August 27, 2015

 

Boston Bombing juror says he regrets giving Tsarnaev the death penalty

Kevan Fagan, ‘Juror 83’ in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, says he probably would not have voted for the death penalty had he been aware that the families of some victims wanted a life sentence.
On Monday, the same day a federal judge ruled to keep the names of all jurors in the trial sealed, Mr. Fagan sat down for an interview with WBUR-FM.
Fagan is the first juror to speak publicly using his name, and to be photographed, according to the station.
Fagan would not discuss deliberations but said he “would probably change” his vote in the penalty phase of the trial if he had been aware that the parents of 8-year-old victim Martin Richard opposed the death penalty.
The week before the jury was set to deliberate on life imprisonment or death for Mr. Tsarnaev, nearly two years to the day of the bombing, Bill and Denise Richard wrote an essay, published in The Boston Globe, that a death sentence would only lead to lengthy appeals and draw out the anguish for their family:

We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives. We hope our two remaining children do not have to grow up with the lingering, painful reminder of what the defendant took from them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring.

The jurors were ordered to avoid social media and press throughout the trial.
Source: Business Insider, August 25, 2015

Federal Judge Temporarily Halts Mississippi Executions

Judge Henry Wingate gave the order verbally on Tuesday, following up with a written order Wednesday, in a case that challenges the state’s lethal injection methods as cruel and unusual.

A federal judge has temporarily halted Mississippi from carrying out executions.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate gave the order verbally on Tuesday in response to a suit brought by death row inmates challenging Mississippi’s lethal injection methods as cruel and unusual.

On Wednesday, Wingate followed up with a written order, finding that the inmates are likely to succeed on their claim that “Mississippi’s failure to use a drug which qualifies as an ‘ultra short-acting barbiturate or other similar drug’ as required” by state law violates both that law and the U.S. Constitution’s due process guarantees.

Under the order, Mississippi is barred from using “pentobarbital, specifically in its compounded form, or midazolam, from executing any death row inmate at this time.” Additionally, the state must inform the court of any other execution procedure it wishes to use before executing any inmate.

Mississippi had hoped to execute inmate Richard Jordan on Thursday for a murder as part of a kidnapping in 1976. The state’s execution protocol calls for three drugs — a sedative, followed by a paralytic and then a drug to cause cardiac arrest. The protocol is similar to the one approved by the U.S. Supreme Court this year, but inmates counter that the state is lacking safeguards that other states have — such as an EKG to verify the inmate is actually unconscious.

The inmates also say Mississippi is further constrained by state law that mandates executions be performed with an “ultra short-acting barbiturate or other similar drug.” In the middle of litigation, the state switched its anesthetic to midazolam, the drug the Supreme Court recently approved. However, it is not a barbiturate.

Mississippi, like many other death penalty states, attempts to keep the supplier of its execution drugs a secret.

Attorney General Jim Hood’s office has filed a notice with Wingate’s court that it is appealing the ruling.

Read the order:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2300605-ms-jordan-v-fisher-pi.html#text/p1

Alabama death row inmate maintains state is wrongly ignoring his claims of innocence

The latest Alabama inmate seeking freedom from death row maintains the state is wrongly ignoring his claims of innocence while his health fails behind bars, one of his attorneys said Monday.
Legal arguments filed by Donnis Musgrove contend the state is arguing about technicalities rather than addressing legitimate concerns about the man’s 1988 conviction and death sentence.
Musgrove’s appeal is currently in federal court, and the defense is asking the judge to rule quickly because the prisoner has lung cancer and was hospitalized last week in grave condition, said Cissy Jackson, one of his lawyers.
“We would love to get him out of prison … so he could have some peace after being wrongfully imprisoned for so many years,” said Jackson.
Out of the hospital and sent back to Donaldson prison near Birmingham, Musgrove will be treated in the prison infirmary for an indefinite period, Jackson said.
The attorney general’s office didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on Musgrove’s legal arguments or health.
The state has argued that rules prohibit Musgrove from making new claims about being innocent and bar him from questioning evidence used in his trial, but prosecutors haven’t directly addressed his arguments about being wrongfully convicted based on bogus evidence conjured by prosecutors and police.
Musgrove, 67, was sentenced to die for the gunshot killing of Coy Eugene Barron in 1986, but his attorneys maintain the prosecution falsified every piece of evidence against him, including witness statements and a shell casing that was used to link him to the slaying.
Source: The Guardian, August 24, 2015

Veintidós personas de distintas nacionalidades están en el corredor de la muerte en Texas

Junto al nicaragüense Bernardo Tercero, cuya ejecución está programada para el miércoles de esta semana, hay otros 21 extranjeros en el corredor de la muerte en Texas, en su mayoría mexicanos y centroamericanos, aunque también los hay de Sudamérica, Asia y el Caribe.
Si nada lo impide, al nicaragüense lo ejecutarán el miércoles a las seis de la tarde locales en la cárcel de Huntsville, la más antigua de Texas y en la que ya han sido ajusticiados 13 extranjeros desde marzo de 1993, cuando el dominicano Carlos Santana murió a manos de sus verdugos.
Tercero fue condenado por asesinar a otro hombre en 1997 durante un atraco en una lavandería de Houston, crimen por el que ha pasado los últimos 15 años de su vida en el temido corredor de la muerte de Texas, ubicado en la cárcel de Polunsky.
Once mexicanos y tres salvadoreños, entre otros
Además de Tercero, en Texas están condenados a muerte 11 mexicanos, tres salvadoreños, dos hondureños, un argentino, un dominicano, un vietnamita, un bangladesí y una única mujer nacida en la isla caribeña de San Cristóbal y con pasaporte británico.
La mayoría está en la cárcel por un asesinato, aunque hay casos como el del mexicano Abel Ochoa que en 2002 mató a su esposa, a sus dos hijas de 7 años y de 9 meses, a su suegro y a su cuñada, o el del salvadoreño Héctor Medina, que mató a su hijo de tres años y a su hija de ocho meses en 2007.
Otros, como el mexicano Juan Carlos Álvarez está condenado por el asesinato de cuatro miembros de una banda rival en 1998 o el también mexicano Ignacio Gómez que mató en 1996 a tres personas tras una pelea.
Por su parte, el hondureño Edgardo Cubas y el salvadoreño Walter Sorto fueron condenados por el secuestro, violación y asesinato en 2002 de tres mujeres hispanas, una de ellas de 15 años, aunque hay sospechas de que pudieron estar involucrados en más casos parecidos.
Cubas estuvo a punto de ser ejecutado en 2014, pero finalmente suspendieron su cita con los verdugos.
Otros, como el salvadoreño Gilmar Guevara, que en el 2000 mató a dos personas durante un atraco, ya han agotado todos sus recursos legales y podrían recibir una fecha de ejecución en los próximos meses.
Una británica
Entre los casos más conocidos está el de la mujer británica, Linda Carty, condenada por el secuestro y asesinato de su vecina, Joana Rodríguez.
Según los fiscales, Carty estaba tan desesperada por tener un bebé y salvar su matrimonio que decidió raptar al recién nacido de Rodríguez, cuyo cadáver fue hallado un día después de su desaparición en el maletero de un vehículo.
Carty fue condenada con el testimonio de los autores materiales del crimen, pero ella siempre ha defendido que le tendieron una trampa y su caso ha atraído la atención de los medios de comunicación del Reino Unido.
No lejos de la controversia
La ejecución de ciudadanos extranjeros en los últimos años ha estado rodeada de polémica, ya que en 2004 la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ) de La Haya ordenó en el llamado “Fallo Avena” revisar el caso de 51 mexicanos condenados a muerte en Estados Unidos a quienes se les violó el derecho a notificación consular.
La Convención de Viena sobre Relaciones Consulares obliga a los Estados a informar a los consulados respectivos de la detención de ciudadanos extranjeros, así como al detenido de que tiene derecho a solicitar asistencia consular.
Desde la sentencia, Estados Unidos ha seguido ejecutando a ciudadanos extranjeros, cuatro de ellos “en franca violación” del “Fallo Avena”, según sostiene la Cancillería mexicana.
El director del Observatorio Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), Robert Dunham, dijo a Efe que “Estados Unidos ha violado las leyes internacionales en muchas ocasiones al ejecutar a ciudadanos extranjeros”.
Por su parte, el abogado de Tercero, Mike Charlton, afirmó que “Texas nunca ha respetado los derechos consulares”, por lo que no espera que la violación del derecho a esa notificación tenga ningún efecto en el caso del nicaragüense.
Según datos del DPIC, en Estados Unidos hay 139 extranjeros de 36 nacionalidades condenados a muerte, casi la mitad (61) están en California, mientras que en Texas hay 22 y en Florida 21.
Desde que el Tribunal Supremo de Estados Unidos reinstauró la pena de muerte en 1976, 31 extranjeros han sido ejecutados en todo el país.
Sin embargo, durante casi siete meses de 2015, Texas no ha impuesto la pena de muerte. En algunos casos, los jurados optaron por poner a los convictos tras las rejas de por vida.
Es parte de una tendencia, que indica que la pena de muerte podría estar siendo relegada. Los números muestran, según el exveterano fiscal de distrito Tim Cole, que la aplicación de la pena de muerte ha dejado de ser una herramienta a considerar invariablemente para los fiscales.
“Estamos demostrando como un estado que podemos vivir sin la pena de muerte”, señaló Cole.
Fuente: Univision.com y Agencias, 23/08/2015

Ohio Planned to Import Death Penalty Drug Illegally

August 19, 2015

A letter from the FDA warned the state that importing the drug would break the law.

The state of Ohio planned to illegally import sodium thiopental, a drug used for executions, according to a Food and Drug Administration letter obtained byBuzzFeed through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The June letter says that Ohio planned to “obtain bulk and finished dosage forms of sodium thiopental.” Since the drug is not available in the US, wrote Domenic Veneziano, director of the FDA’s import operation, “we assume this product would be purchased from an oversees source.”

Veneziano reminded Ohio Director of Rehabilitation and Correction Gary C. Mohr that“there is no FDA approved application for sodium thiopental, and it is illegal to import an unapproved new drug into the United States.”

According to BuzzFeed:

The prison Ohio carries out executions in registered for a DEA license to import the drug last year for a “law enforcement purpose,” but until now it was unknown if the state actually intended to use the license.

Ohio, like many other death penalty states, shrouds its execution drug suppliers in secrecy. States argue the secrecy protects their suppliers from intimidation and embarrassment, while death row inmates and open government advocates argue it removes an important check on state power.

When Nebraska received a similar letter from the FDA last year, it came out that the state paid an Indian dealer named Chris Harris more than $50,000 for enough sodium thiopental to execute hundreds of prisoners. (Nebraska has since abolished the death penalty completely.)

BuzzFeed followed up with Ohio corrections department to find out if Harris was the planned supplier for Ohio as well.

When approached by BuzzFeed News about Harris in June, Ohio DRC spokesperson JoEllen Smith said the department’s legal division would have to handle the matter. After spending weeks on the request, she only would say that Ohio had not communicated with Harris’s company, Harris Pharma, but did not specifically answer the question of if the state had purchased from him directly or indirectly. Smith did not respond to follow up questions.

Ohio’s last execution took place in January 2014, when the state gave inmateDennis McGuire 10 milligrams of midazolam, a controversial sedative whose use for lethal injections the Supreme Court recently upheld. Ohio plans a new series of executions beginning in 2016.

Many reputable drug manufacturers don’t want to be associated with the death penalty, much less the botched executions that have prevailed of late. The FDA-approved manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped making the drug in 2011 so that it couldn’t be used for this purpose. When Missouri announced plans to use propofol, the drug found in Michael Jackson’s body at the time of his death, for executions, its German manufacturer expressed displeasure and threatened to get the European Union to stop exporting it the US completely. Many states are now struggling to find the drugs they need for executions.

This fact is compounded in Ohio, whose governor, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, signed a “secret executions” bill this winter that exempts anyone participating in a lethal injection from public records requests. Under the law, medical and nonmedical staff, companies transporting or preparing supplies or equipment used in executions, and providers of the drugs used in lethal injections are all protected from public records requests and do not need to reveal their identity or duties.