Twisted justice in Texas

This is an interesting story - a group of people are breaking the law in order to kill other people. Only, they are not the usual sort of people doing this, but rather they are officials from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and the people they are trying to kill, is the people on Death Row.

Death penalty states scramble for lethal injection drugs

Texas, which declined to comment on the pending case, is among 32 death-penalty states scrambling to find new drug protocols after European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions -- among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital. 

"The states are scrambling to find the drugs," says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. "They want to carry out these executions that they have scheduled, but they don't have the drugs and they're changing and trying new procedures never used before in the history of executions." 

States have been forced to try new drug combinations or go to loosely regulated compounding pharmacies that manufacturer variations of the drugs banned by the larger companies. The suit against Texas alleges the state corrections department falsified a prescription for pentobarbital, including the patient name as "James Jones," the warden of the Huntsville Unit "where executions take place," according to court documents. Additionally, the drugs were to be sent to "Huntsville Unit Hospital," which, the documents say, "has not existed since 1983."

In short, a number of US states don't have the drugs they use to execute people any longer, after European companies have banned the use of those drugs for that purpose - the companies in question are threatening to stop exporting the drugs to the US if they are used to kill people.

In response, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has, allegedly, tried to get the drugs in illegal ways.

Yes, you read that right: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice allegedly breaks the law in order to execute people.

I cannot even begin to understand the twisted priorities of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice - it is more important to them that people get executed than obeying the law they are supposed to help uphold!