The Georgia Department of Corrections has reset Warren Lee Hill’s execution for 7 p.m. Friday even though a judge has scheduled a hearing for Thursday to consider whether his lawyers should be told the identity of the compounding pharmacy that made the drugs that are to be used to put him to death.
Hill was to have been executed Monday, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Gail Tusan stopped it and scheduled a hearing for Thursday morning so she could have more time to consider a new state law that shields the identities of those who make and supply lethal injection drugs. Georgia, like other death penalty states, has found it virtually impossible to secure drugs for lethal injection from the mass manufacturers who are under pressure from death penalty opponents.
So they have opted to use compounding pharmacies. To ensure a source, a state law took effect July 1 making the identities of the providers of lethal injection drugs a state secret, shielding those businesses from public pressure and protests by capital punishment opponents.
If Hill is executed for the 1990 murder of an inmate at the prison where he was already serving a life sentence for killing his 18-year-old girlfriend, it will be the first time Georgia has used a drug made specifically for a specific execution.
The warrant allowing for Hill’s execution expires at noon on Saturday.
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