The Shadow Economy of Lethal Injection Drug Deals

By Tanya Greene

For all we know, the “pharmacy” might be a high school science class.

That’s how a federal appeals court judge described Missouri’s secretive death penalty system back in the spring.

Shady medical experiments masquerading as legal executions have gone horrifically wrong in four states already this year. During the most recent, Arizona officials shot 15 separate doses of experimental drugs into Mr. Joseph Wood. This bungled executionlasted for nearly two hours, during which Mr. Wood gasped for breath 660 times and then finally suffocated to death.

These botches had some common themes: drugs without a disclosed manufacturer, unknown doses, and unqualified medical supervision.

The government of Missouri knows this. Governor Jay Nixon has the opportunity to make sure that the execution scheduled for 36 hours from now in his state does not suffer from this same irresponsibility. He should issue a stay.

At the very least, to carry out an execution, a state should be able to tell us the name and manufacturer of the lethal injection drugs and the drugs’ expiration dates. A state should also be able to provide proof that the drugs are FDA approved. And a state should be able to show the public that executioners are medically qualified to administer the drugs.

Missouri has done none of this. Neither did the four other states where medical experimentation went horribly wrong this year.

What we do know about Missouri’s execution system should scare us. In order to dredge up drugs, Missouri gave one of its corrections officers $11,000 in cash and sent him over the border to Oklahoma. The officer returned with the drugs, but he couldn’t say whether they were pure or whether they’d been stored or transported properly.

When execution teams are buying drugs with cash, we should question why they’ve taken to the shadows.

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