Texas' top criminal appeals court is blocking a civil court from reviewing a lawsuit from inmates scheduled to be executed soon who claim the state is planning to use long-expired drugs to do the deed.
Robert Fratta is scheduled to be executed next week on January 10. Wesley Ruiz and John Balentine are scheduled for execution in February. Ruiz and Balentine filed a lawsuit—which Fratta later joined—in December in the Travis County, Texas, district court seeking an injunction stopping the state from using the pentobarbital it has stored. That's the single drug the state uses for its lethal injections, but the lawsuit claims that some of the drugs expired 20 months ago and others expired more than 43 months ago.
