Texas' prison system doesn't have to reveal where it gets its execution drugs, the state attorney general said Thursday, marking a reversal by the state's top prosecutor on an issue being challenged in several death penalty states.
Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor in the nation's busiest death penalty state, had rebuffed three similar attempts by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since 2010. His decision can be appealed to the courts.
The department argues that the compounding pharmacy providing the drug should remain secret in order to protect it from threats of violence. Lawyers for death row inmates say they need its name to verify the drugs' potency and protect inmates from cruel and unusual punishment.
Similar legal fights are ongoing in other death penalty states, including Oklahoma and Missouri, but courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have yet to halt an execution based on a state's refusal to reveal its drug supplier. The secrecy argument also was used ahead of a bungled execution last month in Oklahoma, though that inmate's faulty veins, not the execution drug, were cited as the likely culprit.
The issue has put Abbott in a thorny position during an election year in Texas, where the death penalty is like gun rights: Candidates don't get in the way of either. Holding firm would please death penalty opponents, who prison officials say want to target drug suppliers with protests and threats; reversing course goes against his vows of government transparency.
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