Earlier this month human rights advocates, legal experts, and other conscientious citizens had their eyes squarely fixed on Texas as it was primed to execute Robert Fratta on January 15. In the process of exterminating Fratta, state lawyers discarded their ethical obligations in a rush to kill.
Fratta had joined a lawsuit filed by Wesley Ruiz (whose execution is scheduled for February 1) and John Balentine (whose execution is scheduled for February 8); as the Associated Press reported at the time, the men argued in Texas trial and appellate courts that the state “plans to use expired and unsafe drugs to carry out executions early this year in violation of state law.” In their court filings the condemned alleged expired pentobarbital—Texas’s drug of choice for killing—put them at “serious risk of pain and suffering in the execution process.”
As Texas Tribune reporter Jolie McCullough reported, Fratta was ultimately executed, but not before “a dramatic day of back-and-forth court decisions on whether the state could continue using lethal drugs long past their original expiration dates.”
