Attorneys for a serial killer asked the US Supreme Court to halt his execution set for today in Texas as they challenge that state's refusal to release information about where it gets its lethal injection drug.
Lawyers for Tommy Lynn Sells made the plea after a federal appeals court allowed the execution to stay on schedule. A lower court had stayed the execution yesterday, ordering Texas to reveal more information about its drug supplier, but the ruling was quickly tossed on appeal.
Sells, who was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 13-year-old South Texas girl in 1999, claims to have committed as many as 70 killings across the US The 49-year-old is scheduled to be lethally injected today evening in Huntsville.
Questions about the source of execution drugs have arisen in several US states in recent months as numerous drugmakers particularly in Europe, where opposition to capital punishment is strongest have refused to sell their products if they will be used in executions.
That's led several state prison systems to compounding pharmacies, which are not as heavily regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration as more conventional pharmacies.
Sells' attorneys argue that they need to know the name of the company now providing the state with pentobarbital, the drug used during executions, in order to verify the drug's quality and protect Sells from unconstitutional pain and suffering.
But 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas prison officials, who argued that information about the drug supplier must be kept secret to protect the company from threats of violence. It also found that the stock of the pentobarbital, a powerful sedative, falls within the acceptable ranges of potency.
The court said that had Texas wanted to use a drug never used before for executions or a completely new drug whose efficiency or science was unknown, "the case might be different."
It's unclear how the Supreme Court would rule. Last month it rejected similar arguments from a Missouri inmate's attorneys who challenged the secrecy surrounding where that state obtained its execution drugs, and the condemned prisoner was put to death.
