An Oklahoma compounding pharmacy with ties to Georgia’s prison system has been temporarily barred from selling lethal injection drugs to Missouri for an execution planned for later this month.
That same pharmacy may have sold Georgia’s prison system pentobarbital, a sedative used in executions, according to a document obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A federal judge Wednesday temporarily blocked The Apothecary Shoppe in Tulsa from selling Missouri lethal injection drugs. .
With mass manufacturers of drugs used in executions in the United States shutting down or refusing to sell their products for lethal injections, Georgia, Missouri and other states have had trouble acquiring lethal injection drugs. Consequently, states have begun using compounding pharmacies, which make individual doses of drugs. The pharmacies have been promised anonymity to protect them from being targeted by anti-death penalty activists. And Georgia has one of the nation’s strictest laws, barring even courts from knowing the identity of pharmacies selling lethal injection drugs.But shielding their identities only raised a new legal issue in the capital punishment debate.
This week the Georgia Supreme Court will hear arguments in an appeal by condemned killer Warren Hill about the constitutionality of a state law that took effect July 1 making the identity of the provider of lethal injection drugs a secret. Hill’s execution was stopped when a Fulton County judge ruled the new state law keeping the names of the providers of the drugs secret was likely unconstitutional.
“It’s basically to protect the pharmacist (from negative publicity) and, in a way, to protect the state’s supply,” Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said of such secrecy laws. “But if there are problems with a provider, it’s good that the public know that.”
Georgia corrections officials declined to name the company that made the pentobarbital that was to have been used last summer to execute Hill, who was sentenced to death in the 1990 murder of John Handspike. The victim was an inmate in the prison where Hill was already serving a life sentence for murdering his former girlfriend.
A contract between Georgia and a pharmacy that prevented the company from discussing its business with the state was filed with Fulton County Superior Court last July in Hill’s appeal. All identifying detail was blacked out.
However, months later that same agreement was offered by The Apothecary Shoppe as a template when Louisiana was negotiating with The Apothecary Shoppe for lethal injection drugs. That unredacted document, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, identifies Georgia as a client.
The Georgia Department of Corrections declined a request this month from the AJC for letters or contracts with the Apothecary Shoppe of Tulsa on the basis that state law does not allow the agency to disclose the identities of “any person or entity that manufactures, supplies, compounds or prescribes drugs … utilized in the lethal injection process.”
Messages left with a spokeswoman for The Apothecary Shoppe this week were not returned.
A spokesman for the compounding industry, David Ball, said the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists has no formal position on compounding pharmacies’ preparation of drugs used in executions.
“Every pharmacist that I know chose their profession, in part, out of a desire to help people, and that is what they focus on in their work,” Ball said.
Seven states secure lethal injection drugs from compounding pharmacies. Six of those states use pentobarbital, a drug commonly used to euthanize animals.
Others provide some degree of secrecy for the compounding pharmacies. Georgia’s and South Dakota’s laws say the identities of the drug providers cannot be revealed to anyone.
“Right now, no one can really test the credentials of the (pharmacies) or the drugs,” said Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.
Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Missouri could keep the identity of its lethal injection drug provider a secret.
On Monday, however, the head of the prison system in Missouri confirmed to state lawmakers that a corrections officer drove to Tulsa to retrieve a batch of compounded pentobarbital from The Apothecary Shoppe. The officer paid for the drugs with $11,000 in cash so the pharmacy’s identity would be protected, Missouri Department of Corrections Director George Lombardi told a legislative committee.
Tuesday, a federal lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma, asking the court to block The Apothecary Shoppe from providing compounded pentobarbital for the scheduled Feb. 26 execution of Michael Taylor, condemned for a 1989 kidnapping, rape and murder. A temporary injunction was issued Wednesday and a hearing was set for next Tuesday.
The lawsuit says compounded pentobarbital has caused problems in executions in other states, but it does not say The Apothecary Shoppe made the drugs used in those executions.
The suit notes that during his Oct. 15 execution in South Dakota, Eric Robert gasped “heavily” and “his skin turned a blue-purplish hue,” and his heart beat for 10 minutes after his last breath.
“This reaction is consistent with use of either contaminated or sub-potent drug product,” the lawsuit said.
The other example offered in the lawsuit was Oklahoma’s execution Jan. 9 of Michael Lee Wilson, who said he felt like his body was burning.
“Every time something has been discovered about the execution process (it has involved) problems,” said Patrick Mulvaney, an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights. “There were problem with how (lethal injection) drugs were imported. There were problems with drugs being expired. … We need to know because the process by which the state is killing people is a matter of real public importance.”
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