State Kills Man With Drug from Secret Pharmacy

Another month, another execution in Missouri.  That's five in five months.   Man raped and killed girl, then seemed to find God and do good deeds in prison. Not a new story.  But the desperate drive to execute there is revealed in how they've gotten around a problem that has slowed state killings elsewhere--the difficulty in obtaining the drugs for the lethal injection cocktail, as some companies and outlets express qualms (at last) about this.  But in the "Show Me State," they've done this:

Missouri switched to a one-drug execution method late last year. The state obtains the drug, pentobarbital, from a compounding pharmacy that it refuses to name.
Ferguson's attorney, Jennifer Herndon, had argued that the state's secretive process prohibited the public from knowing exactly how the drug was made and whether it could cause pain and suffering for the inmate.

The same drug was used in the state's four previous lethal injections this year. Like Ferguson, those inmates also showed no outward signs of distress during the execution process.

Missouri executed just two men between 2005 and November. But after the state switched from a three-drug execution method to a single-drug protocol last year, executions resumed.  Although critics have raised concerns about the drug and the secretive ways Missouri obtains and uses it to kill inmates, more executions are likely.

For my ebook on the history of the death penalty in the USA, up to the current day, go here.