Texas 'running out' of execution drug pentobarbital

[Jazzy]

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said that the state's supply of pentobarbital would end in September.

Texas has the highest execution rate in the country, with 11 inmates put to death so far in 2013.

Some drugs companies have objected to their products being used for capital punishment.

Texas has used pentobarbital, a drug used to treat severe epilepsy, in executions since July 2012.

The state was forced to change to the single-dose sedative when supplies of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used previously, were cut off.

But state officials are now having difficulties with the availability of pentobarbital, which is also typically used to put down animals.

"We will be unable to use our current supply of pentobarbital after it expires,'' the Associated Press news agency quoted department spokesman Jason Clark as saying. "We are exploring all options at this time."

The state is planning at least five more executions this year.

Richard Dieter, who heads the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, said other states would be having similar problems.

"The states really scramble to go all over to get drugs,'' he told AP.

"Some went overseas, some got from each other. But these manufacturers - a number them are based in Europe - don't want to participate in our executions. So they've clamped down as much as they can."

Source

Volumes of research have suggested the death penalty is significantly more expensive to taxpayers than the punishment of life in prison, due largely to the lengthy legal processes involved. Therefore, isn't it more cost effective to let them rot behind bars?

 

[DrLeftover]

Volumes of research have suggested the death penalty is significantly more expensive to taxpayers than the punishment of life in prison, due largely to the lengthy legal processes involved. Therefore, isn't it more cost effective to let them rot behind bars?

The 'average' cost of a convict in a state institution is $35 to $50 THOUSAND dollars a year.

Somebody sentenced to death in their twenties or thirties may live another thirty or forty years if allowed to expire naturally. And every year that he gets older, he will require more medical attention, which is more expense.

You do the math.

And, into the mix, every day he is in prison he is bored, and has nothing to do except sue the prison because he can't get chunky peanut butter.

But the Monroe v. Pape decision also opened the way for some of the quirkiest lawsuits ever to enter the court system, like the case of Kenneth Parker and his two-year suit over a jar of chunky peanut butter.

Mr. Parker, then an inmate at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City sentenced to 15 years for robbery, wanted to buy two jars of chunky peanut butter from the prison canteen at a cost of $5.

The canteen sent him one jar of chunky, but had to substitute a jar of creamy after running out of chunky style. Mr. Parker filed a civil rights suit, demanding a jail term for a prison official and $5,500 for "mental and emotional pain."

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/21/nyregion/flood-of-prisoner-rights-suits-brings-effort-to-limit-filings.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

 

[Jazzy]

Aside from Texas, most of the 34 US states with death penalty laws on the books seldom carry out executions. But even those that do must spend billions of dollars to defend the death sentence against prisoners' appeals and to house the condemned securely and what they see as humanely.

California, for instance, has spent about $4bn (£2.54bn) since 1978 to fund its capital punishment system, but has executed only 13 prisoners, Federal Judge Arthur Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula Mitchell found in a law review article.

In that same period, at least 78 death row inmates died of natural causes, suicide or other causes while awaiting execution, they wrote.

In Washington state, one prosecutor told a committee of the state bar association that capital cases are at least four times as costly to prosecute as a non-capital murder trial.

"The rarefied nature of a death penalty case results in more motions being brought and more advocacy being presented, which further adds to the time and costs of a capital case," the commission reported in 2006.

The on-the-day costs of the execution vary from state to state, but are relatively small compared to the costs the states incur on the way to the death chamber.

Source

 

[DrLeftover]

On a side note, this is not solely a US debate:

Would seven Cape policemen still be alive if South Africa put cop killers to death? It’s a moral dilemma, says Murray Williams.

Cape Town - “Police killers do not fear the law… Parliament should examine bringing back the ultimate punishment… The Police Federation has long called for the death penalty for police killers too.”

http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/who-should-decide-on-executing-killers-1.1556555