KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For the first time since 2015, Missouri has returned to executing multiple people on death row per year — two in 2022 and two scheduled so far for 2023 — but details about the process remain shrouded in secrecy.
Nineteen prisoners have capital sentences, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. The Missouri Supreme Court has issued death warrants for two of them: Amber McLaughlin is scheduled to die Jan. 3 and Leonard Taylor’s execution date is Feb. 7.
The state of Missouri uses pentobarbital, a drug commonly used in animal euthanasia. Public records show the state spends at least $20,500 on the drugs used for each execution.
But it’s unclear where Missouri is obtaining pentobarbital.
Most pharmaceutical companies have stopped supplying chemicals for use in executions, citing ethical concerns. As supply issues have increased, states have resorted to illegally importing drugs and trading drugs with other states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). Some, including Missouri, have turned to compounding pharmacies, which formulate drugs not available at commercial pharmacies.
DPIC said past compounders did not have a license to do business in Missouri, had questionable potency practices and had drugs contaminated with bacteria.
While The Star obtained the state’s lethal injection protocol as well as medication inspections and partially redacted receipts for pentobarbital, prison officials would not answer questions about the current supplier, citing a Missouri statute that grants confidentiality to members of the execution team.
They have not responded to questions about what quality control measures are taken or when the vials in the DOC’s possession expire.
While some question why safety standards are needed for someone who is going to die, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote — in a Missouri case — that executions cannot “superadd” pain. Doing so would violate the Eighth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
The DPIC said 2022 “could be called ‘the year of the botched execution’” after issues arose in seven of 20 execution attempts. Eighteen people were ultimately executed in six states. All died by lethal injection.
In addition to the risk of botched executions, death penalty opponents cite other reasons they believe the practice should be abolished: the possibility of executing an innocent person, religious morals and costs associated with death row. Some believe the lack of transparency in Missouri also raises serious questions.
Rep. Tony Lovasco, a Republican from St. Charles County, said the secrecy surrounding the sourcing of lethal injection drugs “has been and remains completely unacceptable.”
“Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent, and the details of all procurements should be available for public scrutiny,” he said in an email.
The legislative session begins Jan. 4. Lovasco said he plans he introduce a bill prohibiting the death penalty.
“As a Republican, I’ve always fought for a smaller, more limited government,” he said. “But there’s no greater hallmark of big government than granting the state the power to kill its own people with premeditation.”
Gov. Mike Parson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Michelle Smith, co-director of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the state has been “hellbent” on carrying out executions and that the corrections department’s secrecy around the drugs it uses was egregious.
“Our money as taxpayers is being used to cause more harm than good and so they don’t want to answer those particular questions.”
Lack of transparency
The state has a two-page protocol for lethal injection, last updated in 2013. It defines the execution team and covers the preparation of chemicals: syringes one, two, four and five are filled with five grams each of pentobarbital. Syringes three and six contain saline. Syringes one and two are injected, followed by saline. If the person has not died, syringes four, five and six are used.
The document also outlines finding intravenous lines, monitoring the prisoner and documentation of chemicals.
Documents show during a Nov. 23 medication inspection — six days before the execution of Kevin Johnson — the Missouri Department of Corrections acquired four additional vials of pentobarbital for a total of 32 vials. Unlike most of the other drugs listed, an expiration date for the pentobarbital was not recorded.
In response to an open records request from The Star for documents related to purchases of pentobarbital from 2017 to December 6, 2022, the Department of Corrections included seven receipts dating back to August 16. Two were for training or consultation purposes while five, labeled “Execution Services Voucher,” were related to the executions of Johnson, McLaughlin and Taylor. The receipts totaled nearly $50,000. It’s unclear whether receipts prior to August exist.
Information used to be more transparent. But in 2007, Missouri lawmakers passed a bill shielding the identities of those involved in executions. The move came after a doctor who had participated in executions testified that he was dyslexic and had made mistakes administering the drugs for lethal injections.
“It was embarrassing to the state,” said Anthony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU of Missouri. “It’s not in a vacuum that the legislature acted to cover up and hide who’s involved in executions.”
Still, information came to light showing corrections officials used the Apothecary Shoppe in Oklahoma as a supplier for pentobarbital. According to DPIC, the drug was bought in person with cash and may have violated state and federal laws because the company was not licensed in Missouri and engaged in an interstate sale of a controlled substance without a valid prescription. During inspections, the company was later found to have violated nearly 1,900 guidelines including “questionable potency, disinfecting and sterilization practices,” according to the FDA.
Missouri then switched to Foundation Care. The FDA discovered it had sold drugs without conducting tests for sterility and bacteria, DPIC said in a report. The company was sold in 2017 to Centene, which said it would not sell chemicals to be used in executions, the Associated Press reported.
Officials with the Department of Corrections did not answer questions about where it is now getting pentobarbital, what testing and safety measures are in place or when the drugs they have purchased expire.
Ngozi Ndulue, deputy director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said it can be dangerous for states to be opaque when it comes to executions.
“If you have secrecy, that makes it more likely that people violate policies,” she said. “But then you also don’t have the ability for people to investigate outside of the system to figure out if that’s happening. You can see it being a really vicious cycle.”
Missouri becoming outlier
With 93 executions thus far, Missouri has carried out the fifth-highest number of executions in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to a Death Penalty Information Center database.
Missouri was one of six states, along with Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arizona and Mississippi, that executed people this year. Three states use pentobarbital and three use a three-drug regimen. The DPIC found that several executions were problematic due to failures in following protocols or other issues such as executioners who could not set an IV line.
The center also had “serious concerns” about prisoners who were executed who had intellectual disabilities or claims of innocence.
In Missouri, Carman Deck was executed May 3. He was convicted of murdering two people, though his death sentence was overturned three times. Kevin Johnson was executed over the objections of a special prosecutor who alleged his trial had been “infected” by racism.
Executions in Idaho and Tennessee did not go forward this year after officials encountered challenges obtaining the drug or faced problems with the drug’s quality, local news outlets reported.
Other states abandoned capital punishment. Earlier this month, the governor of Oregon commuted the sentences of 17 prisoners on death row to life in prison.
In its end of year report, DPIC said there was “continuing durability of the more than 20-year sustained decline of the death penalty in the United States.”
Thirty-seven states have not had executions in the past decade.
Execution of Kevin Johnson
But executions continue in Missouri.
Five days after Thanksgiving, dozens of people gathered outside Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, awaiting the impending execution of Kevin Johnson, who killed William McEntee, a St. Louis area police officer, in 2005.
A corrections employee, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, said there were more protesters than usual. The staff member said working that day was their job.
“I have to compartmentalize it.”
The execution team prepared the syringes of pentobarbital, the source of which remains unclear.
Johnson’s former elementary school principal Pam Stanfield was one of his approved witnesses, along with two of his siblings and one of his attorneys. They sat in a prison waiting room awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorneys argued that Johnson’s execution should be halted so that allegations of racial discrimination by the original prosecutor could be heard.
A request to stay Johnson’s execution was denied in a split decision by the justices.
They were escorted into the viewing room. The dark blue curtains, flanked by guards at each end, were closed, Stanfield wrote in a journal entry she shared with The Star.
The victim’s family was in a separate room.
The guards opened the curtains.
“Kevin was lying on what looked like a bed with pillows under his head and a sheet and blanket covering him,” Stanfield wrote.
“Kevin’s brother stomped his feet loudly so Kevin could hear, or perhaps feel the vibration, to know we were there. He looked at us and saw all four of us.”
The Rev. Darryl Gray sat next to Johnson, his hand resting on the 37-year-old’s shoulder.
The execution team injected the pentobarbital.
Stanfield and the others watched Johnson take his last breath. He was pronounced dead at 7:40 p.m.
“He looked like he was sleeping,” Stanfield said.
She joined Johnson’s daughter outside the prison — the 19 year old was not allowed to witness her father’s death due to her age. She told Stanfield that at 7:40 p.m., the wind had picked up and she felt like that was her father telling her he was OK, Stanfield wrote.
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