By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:18pm
Last night, we blogged about Texas's plan to execute Cleve Foster today. This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Foster a last-minute stay of execution. Foster would have been the first person in the state to be executed using a recently announced and untested lethal injection protocol. Though the stay is unrelated to the change in protocol, it ensures that for now, Texas will not have the opportunity to test its new and experimental protocol on Foster, risking needless pain and suffering.
By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 5:57pm
Tomorrow, Texas plans to execute Cleve Foster using a brand new, untested lethal injection protocol. If this protocol doesn’t work properly, Foster could suffer excruciating pain during the execution.
Most death penalty states across the country employ a three-drug cocktail in their lethal injection procedures. A recent national shortage of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic which is the first drug administered, has left Texas and several other states scrambling to find substitutes, in their haste to keep executions running on schedule. After Texas’ remaining supply of sodium thiopental expired in March, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Director Rick Thaler announced that he would substitute a new drug — pentobarbital — for the sodium thiopental.
By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:19pm
Once again, Texas prosecutors have successfully stalled proceedings which almost certainly will establish that Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 for a crime he did not commit. Willingham's relatives had sought a court of inquiry before Judge Charles Baird in Austin to present new evidence of Willingham's innocence for the first time in a court of law. Prosecutors argued that the judge was biased and should be disqualified. When Judge Baird did not agree, prosecutors sought an order from the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals that he should recuse himself, or refer the recusal motion to another judge. Yesterday, that court granted the prosecution's request, and for now, the fate of the court of inquiry remains uncertain. This latest maneuver is part of a broader pattern by Texas prosecutors and political actors to stall and thwart proceedings seeking to uncover the truth that Texas has executed innocent people.
