A federal judge in Las Vegas is holding a series of hearings to assess whether Nevada’s new lethal injection protocol is constitutional. Nevada officials are seeking to use an experimental…
Marta BylicaDecember 20, 2021
A lawsuit filed in Oklahoma County District Court challenges the Oklahoma DOC’s refusal to disclose critical information about the substances used in the state’s lethal injection executions. The plaintiff, Fred…
Marta BylicaNovember 9, 2021
Oklahoma carried out its first lethal injection execution in more than six years. Despite a long and troubling history of botched lethal injections, and having previously rejected the method altogether,…
Marta BylicaOctober 28, 2021
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine granted four reprieves due to the unavailability of lethal injection drugs, continuing the state’s recent trend of postponing executions. According to a press release, these reprieves…
Marta BylicaSeptember 10, 2021
On July 1, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions and ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review policies and procedures governing the administration of…
Marta BylicaJuly 28, 2021
On June 24, 2021, Hikma Phamaceuticals USA Inc. (Hikma), a company that manufactures the anesthetic Ketamine, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, after it emerged that…
Marta BylicaJuly 28, 2021
On February 5, 2021, the Virginia House of Delegates voted to approve a bill to abolish the death penalty in the state and the state Senate approved a similar measure…
Marta BylicaFebruary 16, 2021
Documents obtained by the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and investigative journalists at ProPublica revealed the myriad ways in which the Trump administration has…
Marta BylicaFebruary 16, 2021
In December 2020, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that lethal injection is no longer an option for Ohio executions and lawmakers must choose a different method of capital punishment if…
Marta BylicaFebruary 16, 2021
This Second Edition of the State-by-State Risk Index serves as a guide for companies concerned about execution secrecy laws and the implications for commercial enterprises and public health. The Index…
Lynn PasternyNovember 24, 2020
State of Nebraska ignored drug manufacturers demands to return execution drugs. Less than three weeks before the fentanyl made by a company based in London was used to carry out…
Blaire AndresJuly 27, 2020
A laboratory that was revealed last week to have been testing the purity of a lethal-injection drug for the U.S. Department of Justice has said it will no longer test…
Blaire AndresJuly 20, 2020
In April of this year, the state of Nevada agreed to relinquish its supply of drugs intended for executions to the pharmaceutical companies who manufactured them as part of a…
Lynn PasternyApril 27, 2020
On April 13, 2020, Governor Ralph Northam signed into law a bill ending execution secrecy in Virginia. This significant development marks a major victory against lethal injection secrecy in the…
Lynn PasternyApril 27, 2020
On April 9, 2020, a group of prominent medical practitioners and health experts sent a letter to corrections departments warning that many of the sedatives and paralytics used in executions…
Marta BylicaApril 23, 2020
In May 2019, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the US Department of Justice (DOJ) published an opinion determining that drugs intended for use in lethal injections are not…
Marta BylicaJanuary 31, 2020
Federal Court Stays Four Executions, Ruling Newly-Adopted Federal Execution Protocol Likely Unlawful
On November 20, 2019, the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction barring the Federal Government from carrying out four executions scheduled for December 2019…
Blaire AndresDecember 9, 2019
Ohio’s Governor DeWine announced on August 1, 2019 that he will be delaying the execution of Warren Henness in the state due to challenges in obtaining execution drugs and the…
Pauline AssarssonJuly 31, 2019
A secrecy bill that would have rendered confidential information about the source of the state’s execution drugs stalled earlier this year in Louisiana’s Senate judiciary committee following engagement by pharmaceutical…
Pauline AssarssonMay 11, 2019