Missouri Lies About Lethal Injection, Still Puts a Man to Death
We know almost nothing about how Earl Ringo Jr. was executed in the early hours of the morning by the State of Missouri. Missouri deliberately hid crucial facts about its lethal injection drugs and their administration, blocking the public from understanding how capital punishment is carried out in our name. This state government took the secrecy one step further, its officials telling outright lies under oath about what could happen to Mr. Ringo and others scheduled for execution. We need our courts to care enough to demand the truth. We need other states’ governors to put a halt to executions until we have answers to the most basic questions about lethal injection.
Missouri was caught in its lies a week before Mr. Ringo’s execution date. The Director of the Missouri Department of Corrections George Lombardi promised, under oath, that Missouri would not use midazolam, the controversial drug tied to botched executions in Oklahoma, Ohio, and Arizona. That was at a hearing held in January. But chemical log forms revealed last week prove that prison officials were in fact administering midazolam and had done so in executions both before and after Lombardi’s testimony.
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