Court Allows Arizona to Kill Prisoner with Secret Drugs

Secretly trafficking and then openly using unapproved drugs is now A-OK.  That’s the message sent out yesterday by the Arizona Supreme Court, which allowed state officials to conceal their source for sodium thiopental  (we know only that it’s NOT Hospira, the one FDA-approved supplier), and to continue with plans to execute Jeffrey Landrigan on October 26.

It is already well known that the death penalty compromises the integrity of the medical profession.  Doctors, nurses, and EMTs are all bound by an oath to “do no harm” but all are involved, in a variety of ways, in the deliberate killing of prisoners.  Now, it appears that our zeal for capital punishment is undermining the integrity of efforts to control and regulate powerful drugs.

Normally, if you acquired a controlled substance from a non-FDA approved source and announced your intention to use it for a non-FDA approved purpose, you would expect some sort of legal trouble.  But, apparently, as long as that non-FDA approved purpose is putting someone to death, the normal rules don’t apply.  Instead, you get to keep the source of your drug supply a secret, and you get to use those drugs however you want.

As for Jeffrey Landrigan, some DNA testing litigation in his case continues, and there is a clemency hearing on Friday.  Landrigan’s case is sadly typical, in that his trial lawyer failed miserably to present mitigating evidence, and in that no federal appeals court has cared enough to hold a hearing on that issue.  It is a bit unusual in that the judge who sentenced him to death now says she would not have done so, had she been aware of information that lawyer failed to present. 

So while it appears the Arizona officials can kill Jeffrey Landrigan with a drug it got from God knows where, there is still a chance to convince them that they shouldn’t.

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6 thoughts on “Court Allows Arizona to Kill Prisoner with Secret Drugs

  1. Unbelievable! Not only does Arizona support social injustices and break laws, but they are all racist to Jeffrey Landrigan, who is a Native American person with a LONG history of child abuse and drug abuse, which in this case went TOTALLY ignored! And they say that it's now OK to break the U.S. Constitution and join Texas in seceding from the USA any moment now! If they break the laws and kill Jeffrey for murder, along with Mexican immigrants who are murderers and criminals whom they plan to execute, then they will someday have to answer to a higher authority, i.e., God! This truly disgusts me! 🙁

  2. There sure are a lot of people who want to be very selective of certain details, and disregard the rest. Just a reminder, this "THING" (I won't insult the rest of humanity by dignifying calling IT something else, like a human being) killed before, was sentenced to death, only to have the sentence reduced because of technicality (just like your writer and other commenter are trying to do). Commuted to 40-to-life. While incarcerated, attempts to kill a fellow inmate by stabbing him 14 times (so much for locking IT away, where IT can do no harm). IT subsequently escapes, (again, so much for your false mantra), and within a few weeks, kills again. A posterchild fo the DP, if any is needed. And insofar as your claims of ineffective counsel, it was IT who stopped his lawyers from presenting the very (supposedly) mitigating evidence you claim made the original lawyer incompetent. I don't much like lawyers in general, but based on the case transcripts, your claims are totally unfounded. There are many, MANY stories of people who had much, MUCH worse childhoods/adolescent years, and grew up w/o killing ANYONE. And, though everyone is born with human rights (even IT was); no matter how difficult IT's life may have been, once IT takes another's life, IT loses those rights (IMHO) to be called, much less treated as, a human being. There IS such a thing as evil, and It is evil incarnate….

  3. Bill L., you never seem to care about human rights of prisoners and death row inmates AT ALL! You have so much caveman mentality and only help victims' families while insulting death row inmates (even post-mortem) and their families at the same time! You believe in "a death for a death" and claim that the death penalty is the "solution to life's problems, because it sends monsters and killing machines to hell" and that life imprisonment is "not justice, because if S.O.B.'s escape life imprisonment, they will kill again"! You seem to have a heart of stone, because you never care about us AT ALL! If you insist on spouting out caveman mentality and trying to make me change my views on the death penalty (since I'm an opponent of it), then I'm not visiting this blog again! Goodbye!

  4. Unbelievable! Not only does Arizona support social injustices and break laws, but they are all racist to Jeffrey Landrigan, who is a Native American person with a LONG history of child abuse and drug abuse, which in this case went TOTALLY ignored! And they say that it’s now OK to break the U.S. Constitution and join Texas in seceding from the USA any moment now! If they break the laws and kill Jeffrey for murder, along with Mexican immigrants who are murderers and criminals whom they plan to execute, then they will someday have to answer to a higher authority, i.e., God! This truly disgusts me! 🙁

  5. There sure are a lot of people who want to be very selective of certain details, and disregard the rest. Just a reminder, this “THING” (I won’t insult the rest of humanity by dignifying calling IT something else, like a human being) killed before, was sentenced to death, only to have the sentence reduced because of technicality (just like your writer and other commenter are trying to do). Commuted to 40-to-life. While incarcerated, attempts to kill a fellow inmate by stabbing him 14 times (so much for locking IT away, where IT can do no harm). IT subsequently escapes, (again, so much for your false mantra), and within a few weeks, kills again. A posterchild fo the DP, if any is needed. And insofar as your claims of ineffective counsel, it was IT who stopped his lawyers from presenting the very (supposedly) mitigating evidence you claim made the original lawyer incompetent. I don’t much like lawyers in general, but based on the case transcripts, your claims are totally unfounded. There are many, MANY stories of people who had much, MUCH worse childhoods/adolescent years, and grew up w/o killing ANYONE. And, though everyone is born with human rights (even IT was); no matter how difficult IT’s life may have been, once IT takes another’s life, IT loses those rights (IMHO) to be called, much less treated as, a human being. There IS such a thing as evil, and It is evil incarnate….

  6. Bill L., you never seem to care about human rights of prisoners and death row inmates AT ALL! You have so much caveman mentality and only help victims’ families while insulting death row inmates (even post-mortem) and their families at the same time! You believe in “a death for a death” and claim that the death penalty is the “solution to life’s problems, because it sends monsters and killing machines to hell” and that life imprisonment is “not justice, because if S.O.B.’s escape life imprisonment, they will kill again”! You seem to have a heart of stone, because you never care about us AT ALL! If you insist on spouting out caveman mentality and trying to make me change my views on the death penalty (since I’m an opponent of it), then I’m not visiting this blog again! Goodbye!

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