California Gets Its Out-of-Stock Lethal Injection Drugs For Free Now, Apparently
California officials have kept mum on how they obtained enough out-of-stock lethal injection drugs for up to four executions, but taxpayers will be glad to know the cash-strapped state didn’t pay a penny for them.
At least, that’s what the state’s response to a new public records request suggest.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times broke a story about the ongoing drug shortage that’s halted executions across the country. Specifically, it revealed that California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had mysteriously obtained 12 grams of sodium thiopental — an anesthetic used in executions but whose only manufacturer within the U.S. has run out of.
The state’s previous supply of sodium thiopental had expired in September, which led a federal judge to stay the scheduled execution of convicted rapist-murderer Albert Greenwood Brown. (Brown’s execution would be the state’s first death sentence in almost five years.)
But in an Oct. 6 court filing, the attorney general’s office told a federal judge simply that the CDCR “obtained twelve grams of sodium thiopental on September 30, 2010” that “expires in 2014.”
Yet where the state obtained the mysterious new batch remains unanswered. The filing itself didn’t say how California acquired the drug, and Terry Thornton, the CDCR’s deputy press secretary, told the Times she was “not at liberty to say” where it came from.
Legal analysts and human rights activists want to know where it came from because the drug’s domestic producer, an Illinois-based company called Hospira Inc., can’t make more and its current stocks are either about to expire or already have.
Some have even speculated that California went abroad to score (like Arizona did from the UK), but Thornton told the Associated Press that it “obtained the sodium thiopental lawfully and within the United States.”
Assuming, of course, that California purchased the drug, I filed a public records request for copies of any “receipt(s) for the twelve (12) grams of sodium thiopental obtained by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation referred to in the attached federal court filing.”
Yesterday, the CDCR replied to that request. It had an interesting response:
“The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has reviewed your request and has determined that there are no records responsive to your request.” Which means… no receipt.
Which seemed a little strange, because you’d think that a state as desperately broke as California would be keeping track of every cent. So I e-mailed Thornton:
From: Sergio Hernandez
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 5:43 PM
To: Mazlum, Jessica@CDCR
Cc: Robinson, Samuel (SQ)@CDCR; Thornton, Terry@CDCR
Subject: Re: CPRA Request: Sodium Thiopental Receipt
The Dept of Corrections obtained 12 grams of a lethal injection drug that’s out-of-stock across the country and didn’t get or keep a receipt for it?
I know you guys wouldn’t comment on where the Department obtained the sodium thiopental when the story broke, but would you like to give a statement now on — at the very least — why there are no records for it?
Her reply:
From: Thornton, Terry@CDCR
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 7:17 PM
To: Sergio Hernandez
Cc: Robinson, Samuel (SQ)@CDCR, Mazlum, Jessica@CDCR, Hidalgo, Oscar@CDCR
Subject: Re: CPRA Request: Sodium Thiopental Receipt
Thanks Sergio.
The letter speaks for itself.
There is multiple litigation regarding all aspects of California’s lethal injection laws and procedures in state and federal courts. Because of the ongoing litigation, we cannot provide any additional comment on the issue of sodium thiopental.
If you have any questions, just let me know. Thanks.
Terry
Interestingly, there is an exemption within California’s Public Records law that permits the state to withhold “records pertaining to pending litigation to which the public agency is a party … until the pending litigation or claim has been finally adjudicated or otherwise settled.”
If the CDCR had a receipt it didn’t want to or couldn’t share, it could certainly have denied my request on that basis (and probably would have). So to clarify, I called Thornton, but she refused to comment due to ongoing litigation.
She wouldn’t answer questions about whether the state actually purchased the drugs, or, if it didn’t buy them, how else it could have obtained them, but she did confirm the letter’s language was accurate — the corrections department couldn’t produce a receipt for the sodium thiopental because it doesn’t have one, not because it just doesn’t want to.
Where, how, and from whom California got the drug is still a mystery (which Thornton said the state doesn’t plan to solve unless a judge orders it to), but at the very least, the missing receipt suggests two possibilities, maybe both: 1.) California didn’t purchase or pay for the sodium thiopental at all, and 2.) the CDCR needs a better bookkeeper.
(Source: cerealcommas.com)
