Alternatives to Lethal Injection Not Seen in Texas

Texas Death Chamber

Despite the fact that Texas is running out of the drug used in executions, alternatives like the firing squad are not on the table for the Lone Star State, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.

Following last night’s execution of gang thug Manuel Vasquez, there is only one dose of pentobarbital remaining in the prison system’s medicine cabinet, and officials say they currently have not found a new source for the drug. Five more executions are scheduled between now and the end of April.

Utah lawmakers have approved a bill allowing the firing squad to be used in that state if lethal injection drugs are not available, but State Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston), the veteran head of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and the most powerful official in the world of crime and punishment in the state, is scratching that, or the gas chamber or electric chair, as other options.

“I would think not, I certainly hope not, there is no discussion about it,” Whitmire told News Radio 1200 WOAI’s Michael Board.

The method of execution being lethal injection is codified in state law, meaning that the Legislature would have to change it. The drugs used by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to execute criminals, and the dosage, is left up to TDCJ.

“I think what we are doing now works,” Whitmire said. “The death penalty is a very serious matter. The legislature supports it. The public supports it.”

Since the first execution was carried out in what is now Texas, the execution of a man for piracy in 1819, hanging was the method used for more than 100 years, until the last convict was hanged in 1923, the firing squad was used four times, all during the Civil War when the state was under a form of martial law. Three of the four men executed by shooting were Confederate Army deserters, the fourth was a rapist.

For that period, executions were also under the authority of county governments.

The Texas Legislature made executions a function of the state government in 1923 and ordered the Electric Chair to be the method of execution. A total of 361 people were executed in Texas by the Electric Chair between 1923 and 1964.

Texas pioneered the use of lethal injection, becoming the first jurisdiction anywhere in the world to use lethal drugs for an execution, starting in 1967. Since capital punishment was authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court following a lapse in the mid 1970s, lethal injection has been the only method used.

Source: WOAI, March 12, 2015

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