After a nearly year-and-a-half-long standoff, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has taken matters into its own hands over the Food and Drug Administration’s detainment of execution drugs heading to the Lone Star State.
“My office will not allow the FDA to sit on its hands and thereby impair Texas’ responsibility to carry out its law enforcement duties,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday after he filed a lawsuit against the federal government.
The FDA maintains the 2015 shipment of 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, from India is illegal to import. Texas argues that the federal government has exhibited “unreasonable delay” in keeping the shipment at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport for the past 17 months.
“There are only two reasons why the FDA would take 17 months to make a final decision on Texas’ importation of thiopental sodium: gross incompetence or willful obstruction,” Paxton said.
According to the FDA, the vials of drugs don’t have the required warnings and directions for use, in addition to not being federally approved.
Texas has carried out 538 lethal injections since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and is the state that uses capital punishment the most.
U.S. companies have stopped making lethal injection drugs in recent years, and states such as Texas turned to a foreign seller amid a drug shortage in 2012.
“The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lawfully ordered and obtained the necessary license to import drugs used in the lethal injection process, yet the Food and Drug Administration stopped the shipment and continues to hold it without justification. This has left the agency with no other recourse than to challenge the unjustified seizure in court,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said.
Nine executions are scheduled in Texas for the first six months of 2017. Clark said the state has enough drugs to carry them out, but the department “cannot speculate on the future availability [of] drugs, so the agency continues to explore all options including the continued use of pentobarbital or alternate drugs to use in the lethal injection process.”
