Exonerees leading the annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty
The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy letter to TDCJ demanding Texas return execution drugs for a refund.
Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy Letter to TDCJ by Scott Cobb
Previously the AP reported that The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy was where Texas bought its execution drugs.
The nation’s most active death-penalty state has turned to a compounding pharmacy to replace its expired execution drugs, according to documents released Wednesday, weeks after Texas prison officials declined to say how they obtained the drugs amid a nationwide shortage.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, responding to a Freedom of Information request from The Associated Press, released documents showing the purchase of eight vials of the drug pentobarbital last month from a compounding pharmacy in suburban Houston. Such pharmacies custom-make drugs but aren’t subject to federal scrutiny.
Texas’ previous supply of the sedative expired last month, but prison officials wouldn’t say where they were getting their new supply. Several companies have been refusing to sell the drug for use in executions, leading to a shortage in death penalty states, though at least South Dakota and Georgia have also turned to compounding pharmacies.
Texas — which carries out far more executions than any other state — now has enough pentobarbital to carry out scheduled executions into next year, department spokesman Jason Clark said. Pentobarbital has been used as the lone drug in lethal executions in Texas for more than a year.
“The agency has purchased a new supply of the drug from a Texas pharmacy that has the ability to compound,” Clark said.
A message left by the AP for the pharmacy, The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy, wasn’t returned Wednesday.
Texas’ purchase invoice shows that the warden from the Huntsville Unit, which houses the state’s death chamber, bought eight 2.5-gram vials of pentobarbital on Sept. 16. Five grams, or two vials, are used in each execution, with another 5 grams available should they be needed to complete the execution.
Clark said the agency also has purchased from the same pharmacy another eight vials that will expire April 1. The recently purchased supply will expire in March.
The disclosure came a day after a federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of three death-row inmates who are challenging the state’s use of the new drugs. Among the plaintiffs is death-row inmate Michael Yowell, who is scheduled for execution on Oct. 9 for killing his parents at their home in Lubbock.
The lawsuit, filed in Houston, contends that Texas’ use of untested drugs during an execution would violate the U.S. Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
“Use of compounded pentobarbital would constitute a significant change in the lethal injection protocol, a change that adds an unacceptable risk of pain, suffering and harm to the plaintiffs if and when they are executed,” the lawsuit says.
Clark said he had not seen the lawsuit and would not comment on it.
The lawsuit also alleged that prison officials have been trying to obtain execution drugs in the name of the “Huntsville Unit Hospital,” though a hospital at the prison hasn’t operated since 1983. Clark said the state corrections department had a current federal drug agency number registered to the Huntsville Unit.
Texas switched to a lethal, single dose of the sedative pentobarbital last year after one of the drugs used in its previous three-drug execution process became difficult to obtain. Legal challenges were filed to that revision but failed.
Other death-penalty states have encountered similar problems after some drug suppliers barred the drugs’ use for executions or have refused, under pressure from death-penalty opponents, to sell or manufacture drugs for use in executions.
South Dakota has carried out two executions using the sedative from a compounding pharmacy. Georgia has said it’s taking that route, but it’s difficult to tell exactly how many states have used or are planning to use compounding pharmacies for execution drugs because states frequently resist disclosing the source of the drugs.
Georgia’s first use of an execution drug obtained through a compounding pharmacy was put on hold in July after the condemned inmate challenged a new state law that bars the release of information about where Georgia obtains its execution drug.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers products from compounding pharmacy unapproved drugs and does not verify their safety or effectiveness. But such businesses came under intensified scrutiny after a deadly meningitis outbreak was linked to contaminated injections made by a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy.
The 14th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty is Saturday November 2, 2013 at 2 PM in Austin, Texas at the Capitol.
Meet at the Texas State Capitol Building on the South Side (11th and Congress). After a short pre-march speaker’s program, we will march through the streets of downtown Austin with a stop in front of the Texas Governor’s mansion and return to the Texas Capitol to hear more speakers against the death penalty.
Each autumn since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Austin to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty.
The annual march is organized as a joint project by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations working together with leading national organizations: Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Kids Against the Death Penalty, and national organizations including Journey of Hope … from Violence to Healing, and Witness to Innocence.
The American-Statesman had an article Sunday entitled “Texas prison suicide rate high among inmates in isolation“. Everyone on Texas death row is held in solitary confinement. The term for solitary confinement is “administrative segregation”.
Between 2007 and 2012, the 8,000 to 9,000 state prisoners housed in administrative segregation made up between 5 and 6 percent of the total prison system census. Yet in a given year, the analysis shows, their suicides have accounted for as high as 40 percent of the self-inflicted deaths. Some years, the rate of suicide among administrative segregation inmates is more than 10 times that of the general prison population.
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The deaths also add to the debate over confining mentally ill inmates for long periods in relative isolation. About a quarter of Texas inmates held in administrative segregation have a diagnosis of mental illness or mental retardation.
Below are the names of the 12 people on Texas death row who have committed suicide in the modern era. This list does not include attempted suicides, which would of course be a much higher number. It also does not include cases of self-mutilation that may not have been classified as suicide attempts, such as the case of Andre Thomas, who in 2009 used his bare hands to pull his one remaining eye out and ate it.
Suicides on Texas Death Row
John Devries committed suicide on July 1, 1974 by hanging himself with bed sheets. In 1973, revision to the Texas Penal Code had once again allowed assessment of the death penalty after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled it unconstitutional nationwide in 1972. Under the new statute, the first man (#507 John Devries) was placed on death row on February 15, 1974.
Kenneth Palafox, December 17, 1980
Stephen Mattox, June 26, 1983
Joseph Turner, July 5, 1986
James Gunter August 24, 1997
Deon Tumblin hanged himself in his cell on November 2, 2004.
Christopher Britton hanged himself in his death row cell on February 4, 2005.
Michael Johnson committed suicide by cutting his neck and arm on October 19, 2005, 15 hours before his scheduled execution. He wrote on the wall in blood “I didn’t do it”.
Jesus Flores bled to death after he cut his throat with a razor in his death row cell in Livington’s Polunksy Unit on January 29, 2008. He tried to scrawl a note with his blood on the cell wall. “It appeared he had tried to write something on the wall but it appeared largely illegible, said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
William Robinson, 49, a psychologically troubled inmate, hanged himself with a bed sheet in his Jester 4 Unit cell on Feb 1, 2008.
Ronnie Neal, 39, committed suicide inside his death row cell at the Polunsky Unit by taking pills that he had saved up, June 12, 2010.
Selwyn Davis committed suicide on July 29, 2012. He apparently had accumulated a bunch of pills of some kind and then took them all at once. This was not his first suicide attempt on death row.
The 500th execution in Texas is now on the schedule. The 500th execution under the current schedule will happen on June 26, 2013 when Kimberly McCarthy is scheduled for execution. There may be stays or additions in the schedule that change the date of the 500th. Right now 497 people have been executed in Texas in the modern era.
We urge everyone in Texas and our friends worldwide to take action leading up to the 500th execution to let Texas know that it should stop executions with a moratorium and begin the process of repealing the death penalty.
Let us know if you plan any actions to protest 500 executions in Texas.
We originally posted this information on December 12, 2012, but because there have been more execution dates set, we updated the post on February 4 and again on May 9 to reflect the new date for the 500th execution.
Texas is nearing 500 executions in the modern era since the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty was constitutional. Texas conducted its first execution after the ruling in 1982.
To express your opposition to any execution, you can contact Governor Rick Perry’s office at 512 463 2000. If you call after business hours, you can leave a voice mail message. During business hours, someone should answer the phone. You can also send a message using a form on Perry’s official website.
498) Jefferey Williams, May 15, 2013
499) Elroy Chester III, June 12, 2013
500) Kimberly McCarthy, June 26, 2013
501) Rigoberto Avila Jr July 10, 2013
502) John Quintanilla Jr. July 16, 2103
503) Vaughn Ross, July 18, 2013
504) Douglas Feldman, July 31, 2013
505) Robert Garza, September 19, 2013
506) Arturo Diaz September 26, 2013
Texas executed 15 people in 2012, two more people than in 2011. 73 percent of the people Texas executed in 2012 were people of color, seven African-American and four Hispanics. There were four white people executed by Texas in 2012.
Five people were executed from Dallas County, two from Bexar County, two from Montgomery County, one from Harris County, one from Gregg County, one from Polk County, one from Cherokee County, one from Jefferson County and one from Tarrant County.
Since December 7, 1982, the state of Texas has executed 492 people. There have been 253 executions in Texas since Rick Perry took office in December 2000.
2011 saw the lowest number of executions in 15 years dating back to 1996. The highest number of executions was 40 in 2000.
So far, 9 people have been sentenced to death in 2012 in Texas - one more than in 2011. New death sentences have declined from their high in the late 90s. In 1999, there were 48 people sentenced to death. Harris County, where Houston is located, did not send anyone to death row in 2012.
After three convictions and death sentences, all of which were at least partially overturned on appeal, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office announced in August 2012 that it would drop efforts to execute Anthony Pierce, who had been on death row since 1978.
88.8 percent of the nine new death sentences handed out in 2012 in Texas have been given to people of color. Of the nine people sentenced to death so far in Texas in 2012, seven are African-American, one is Hispanic and one white. One of the nine persons is a woman.
The number of new death sentences has declined over the last several years in large part because people who serve on juries are increasingly choosing life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty, because members of juries have read about so many mistakes in the system when innocent people have been convicted only to be exonerated years later.
Cathy Henderson, who has been on death row in Texas for 17 years, was granted a new trial in 2012. The trial court said in its ruling in May that she “has proven by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted her of capital murder in light of her new evidence”. Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg has said she will retry Henderson.
In September, Texas executed Cleve “Sarge” Foster who had received three previous stays of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. Read a report from Gloria Rubac, who was with Foster’s family in Huntsville on the day of the execution.
John Balentine received a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court in August 2012, less than an hour before he was due to be put to death in Texas. Balentine argued he deserved a reprieve because an ineffective trial lawyer failed to present mitigating evidence, such as emotional problems and a difficult upbringing, that could have led to a life sentence.
Two people on death row died in custody in 2012: Santos Minjarez from San Antonio died Jan. 14, 2012 in Galveston, six days after he was transferred from death row. The cause of death was septic shock and multiple organ failure. Selwyn Davis of Austin was found dead in his death row cell on July 20, 2012 of suicide.
More than three decades after he was sent to death row, Delma Banks Jr. in 2012 agreed to accept a life sentence for the 1980 slaying of acquaintance Richard Whitehead – a murder he has long maintained he did not commit. Banks, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury of the slaying of 16-year-old Whitehead (white) near Nash, Texas, in 1980.
After 12 years of organizing and lobbying by ordinary grassroots Democrats across the state as well as by exonerated former death row inmates, the Texas Democratic Party has adopted a platform that calls for repealing the death penalty in Texas. “Democrats Against the Death Penalty”, which was formed in 2004, held a meeting at the TDP State Convention in June 2012. Watch a powerful video of Clarence Brandley, an innocent man who spent ten years on Texas death row for a crime he did not commit, speaking at the meeting of “Democrats Against the Death Penalty” on June 8, 2012 at the Texas Democratic Party State Convention in Houston.
In July, the Austin Human Rights Commission passed a resolution calling for Texas to repeal the death penalty and for a statewide moratorium on executions.
In July, Texas changed to a one drug method to carry out executions instead of its previous three-drug method, because of short supply in drugs that was caused by pressure on drug companies from people in the drugs producing countries who are opposed to executions.
In October, Todd Willingham’s family officially requested a pardon for him from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Rick Perry. No action has yet been taken on the request.
According to KTBC in Austin, hundreds of people rallied at the Texas Capitol at the 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty on November 3, 2012. Three death row survivors from Witness to Innocence attended the march, including Ron Keine (watch video).
The 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty will be Saturday November 3, 2012 at 2 PM in Austin, Texas at the Capitol. Meet at the Texas State Capitol Building on the South Steps (11th and Congress).
If you want to help promote the march, you can download a black and white flyer or a color version and put them up on bulletin boards or hand them out.
There is a bus coming from Houston. Contact Gloria Rubac at 713-503-2633, if you would like to ride the bus from Houston.
HOUSTON BUS
LEAVES: 9:00 AM from S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, 3815 Live Oak, Houston 77005
TICKETS: $10, $5 for students, unemployed, and fixed income
RETURN: 8:00 or 9:00 PM that evening
The 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty will be Saturday November 3, 2012 at 2 PM in Austin, Texas at the Capitol.
Each autumn since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of the year and gathered in Austin to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty. The annual march is a coming together of activists, family members of those on death row, family members of murder victims who oppose the death penalty, community leaders, exonerated and innocent death row survivors and all those calling for repeal of the death penalty.
The annual march is organized as a joint project by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations and their friends, including Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Witness to Innocence, Kids Against the Death Penalty, International Socialist Organization, the Texas Civil Rights Project, The Austin Chronicle, NOKOA, Gray Panthers, Democrats for Life, and Texas Democrats Against the Death Penalty.
If you would like to list your business or organization as a sponsor of the march, please contact us.
Texas is nearing 500 executions since 1982. Rick Perry is nearing 250 executions since he became governor.
Before his execution, Todd Willingham told his parents, “Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.”
Before his execution, Troy Davis told his supporters in a letter, “There are so many more Troy Davises. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.”
On November 3, 2012 at 2 PM in Austin, you can join the fight for justice by attending the 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Now is the time to join the fight to end the death penalty! More and more people are concluding that the death penalty is a punishment that Texas can do without.
The state of Texas has executed Marvin Wilson, a man who shouldn’t have been eligible for the death penalty because of his low IQ. If you are angry that Texas has executed a person with an IQ of 61, then plan to come to the 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty at the Texas Capitol on November 3, 2012 at 2 PM.
Here is the appeal submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Marvin Wilson, a man with an intellectual disability who is scheduled for execution in Texas on Tuesday August 7 despite having an IQ of 61. The New York Times says: “The court must stop this cruel and unconstitutional execution of a mentally retarded man.”
To protest this execution, call Texas Governor Rick Perry at 512 463 2000.
You can also call any member of the Texas House of Representatives and urge them to support a moratorium on execution in the next legislative session that begins in January 2013.
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Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle has more:
At 54, Marvin Wilson can’t use a telephone book. He reads and writes on a first- or second-grade level. Those who know the Southeast Texas man say he can’t match socks, he doesn’t understand what a bank account is for, he’s been known to fasten his belt to the point of nearly cutting off his circulation. The day his son was born, one sister recalled, he reverted to the familiar habit of sucking his thumb.
His IQ, according to the most valid indicator of human intelligence, is 61, below the first percentile. This was one of many clinical tests and factors that led a neuropsychologist with decades of experience to diagnose Wilson with “mild mental retardation.”
Nevertheless, at 6 p.m. Tuesday night, the state of Texas, in your name and mine, is scheduled to kill Marvin Wilson by lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court – citing the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment – banned the execution of the mentally retarded a decade ago.
But like other federal mandates, Texas has found a way around this one, too.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 2002 decision in a case called Atkins, exempted all mentally ill offenders from execution, in part because those who struggle with impulse control, for example, are less culpable for their crimes. But also because mentally ill offenders may be especially vulnerable to wrongful convictions since they’re less able to help attorneys build strong defenses.
Wilson is a textbook example. According to his attorneys’ brief, Wilson was fingered as the lead shooter by a more sophisticated accomplice, and evidence of his “confession” in the murder of police informant Jerry Williams came from the accomplice’s wife.
In Atkins, the high court held that the states, many of which had begun to ban executions of the mentally retarded on their own, had reached a national consensus that the practice was immoral.
Steinbeck’s Lennie
Of course, certain conservative factions in Texas, as usual, fell somewhere outside those evolving standards of decency. The Supreme Court left it up to the states to design procedures to implement the ban, but the state with the most active death chamber took that as an invitation to redefine the ban itself.
In a 2004 opinion, Texas’ highest court announced that, where executions were concerned, it didn’t have to define “mental retardation” the same way as other states. It didn’t even have to define it the same way it does for impaired Texas school children.
No, the fine jurists of Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals made up a new definition of “mentally retarded” especially for defendants in capital crimes. It wasn’t based on science or the generally accepted definition of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. It was based on myths, stereotypes and even a fictional character: Lennie in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”
Forget the national consensus. The Texas court was concerned only with the Texas consensus, “the level and degree of mental retardation” that Texans would agree should be exempted from the death penalty.
“Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck’s Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt,” the court said. But someone else who didn’t meet that stereotypical description and merely had a clinical diagnosis to prove his mental retardation? Well, that’s a different story.
The court then set about redefining what it means to be mentally retarded in a capital case. The “Briseno factors” are a list of questions fact-finders should ask in criminal cases to determine whether a defendant is mentally retarded enough to be spared. The goal, of course, is to spare as few as possible.
The factors include such subjective and unscientific questions as whether a defendant can plan and lie. (My toddler is capable of both when there’s a cookie within reach.) Another question asks whether family and friends in the defendant’s life “think he was mentally retarded.” Never mind that mental retardation can be genetic and family members themselves may be impaired. The seventh, and most problematic factor invites the fact-finder to look at how the crime was perpetrated, which introduces emotion into a process that should be solely based on reason.
Wilson’s last hope
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found the lower court’s interpretation reasonable. The Texas Legislature has failed to address the issue after Gov. Rick Perry vetoed an earlier ban on such executions passed by lawmakers.
Wilson’s last hope is for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in today and grant a stay of execution so that the high court can consider his case along with another similar Texas case pending before it.
Once again we need the nation’s highest court to save us from ourselves. To remind us of our humanity. To impose on us the cruel confines of decency.