The Democratic governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, has rejected a revival of the electric chair as the commonwealth’s main method of executions, opting instead for a more modern technique for ensuring judicial killings can go ahead: the imposition of total state secrecy.
In a last-minute ruling first reported by the Washington Post, the governor, a close political ally of Hillary Clinton, gutted a bill that would have seen the return of “Old Sparky”, Virginia’s electric chair.
The bill was introduced as an act of desperation amid the dwindling of the state’s lethal injection supplies brought about by a stringent ethical boycott of drug sales to US prisons by the European Union.
As an alternative means of keeping the death chamber in use, McAuliffe introduced an amendment to the bill late on Sunday night that would erect a ring of complete secrecy around the source of the lethal injection drugs used to execute inmates.
Specifically, the corrections department would be authorised to buy medical drugs such as the sedative pentobarbital from so-called “compounding” pharmacies that make up batches of chemicals to order.
Under the terms of the amendment, in any execution the identity of the pharmacist that did the compounding would be withheld from the public.
Should the new amendment become law, the first prisoner likely to be executed under its shroud of secrecy would be Ivan Teleguz, who is facing the death chamber barring the intervention of the US supreme court.
Lawyers acting for Teleguz have compiled strong evidence that he is innocent of murdering his former girlfriend, including affidavits from two of the state’s three key witnesses in which they both recant their statements.
Several death penalty states have introduced secrecy measures similar to those proposed by McAuliffe. The main aim is to shield pharmacists from public scrutiny and thus keep supply lines of lethal drugs open.
Last month, a judge in Missouri ordered the state’s department of corrections to reveal the identity of two pharmacies that had been compounding its lethal injection drugs. In the case brought by the Guardian, Associated Press and several Missouri news outlets, the judge ruled that the pharmacies could not be counted a part of the execution team, and as such were not entitled to anonymity.
The Guardian lawsuit argues that the use of secrecy to hide the source of lethal injection drugs is a breach of the public’s first amendment rights to know how governments are carrying out the ultimate punishment in the people’s name.
Last year the American Pharmacists Association put out a statement discouraging its members from participating in executions.
“Pharmacists are healthcare providers and pharmacist participation in executions conflicts with the profession’s role on the patient healthcare team,” it said.
The International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists has also adopted an official position discouraging its members from providing compounded drugs for use in judicial killings.
Maya Foa, an expert on lethal injection drugs at the human rights group Reprieve, said: “It’s abundantly clear that no one in the healthcare industry wants anything to do with supplying drugs for executions – and no amount of secrecy will change that.
“Pharmacists, like manufacturers, make medicines to improve and save the lives of patients, not end the lives of prisoners in executions.”
McAuliffe now has to pass his secrecy amendment back to Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature, which convenes for a new legislative session in nine days’ time.
Majority approval is not a given – an almost identical secrecy measure to hide the source of lethal injection drugs failed earlier this year.
Even if the amendment passes, Virginia’s department of corrections may struggle to procure the drugs. In the past it has had to turn to compounding pharmacies in Texas, as it appeared no local pharmacists were willing to sell it the medicines.
