Hospital Tricked Into Selling Drugs For Lethal Injection
Louisiana told the hospital it needed the drugs to heal inmates, claims the hospital.
According to the Lens, a New Orleans investigative nonprofit, the Louisiana Department of Corrections purchased 20 vials of hydromorphone from Lake Charles Memorial Hospital a week before the scheduled execution of Christopher Sepulvado.
Christopher Sepulvado, 70, was convicted of torturing and murdering his six-year-old stepson in 1992. Despite several successful challenges by his attorneys, Sepulvado was finally scheduled to die on February 5—until the state ran out of pentobarbital, the drug it had been using for executions since 2011.
In January, corrections officials announced they had purchased enough hydromorphone to couple with midazolam, a sedative, in order to carry on the execution as planned…
Despite the state’s significant efforts to hide the source of the drug, hospital officials are now publicly discussing their involvement.
“We were contacted back in January. Our pharmacist here at Memorial, from a pharmacist at the Hunt Medical Center, saying that they needed the drug, hydromorphone, for a medical patient, and at that time we complied with the request. At no time did Memorial believe or was led to believe that the drug would be used for an execution,” Matt Felder, a spokesman for the hospital told KPLC TV.
Eric Trommater August 10th, 2014 at 10:20 pm
What the pro death-penalty (anti-life) groups seem to be oblivious to is that there are just not not a lot of people in the medical profession who want to be associated with killing people. That is why the drugs for lethal injection are getting harder to get. This isn’t some top down conspiricy by left wing radicals to make it harder to get the drugs (unlike the right making restictive laws and closing of so many abortion clinics). This is the free market making it’s choice.
labman57 August 10th, 2014 at 10:24 pm
Hospital administrators hand over lethal drugs to prison system, no questions asked.
They save the “stupid pills” for themselves.
Mainah August 10th, 2014 at 11:05 pm
So I understand this … I do not live in a death penalty state, thankfully … they ran out of phenobarbital and decided “Hey this shit works and add it to a little bit of antianxiety … sure! That otta’ do it!” and that’s legal? I mean, don’t they have some sort of procedure written out? Last time I checked … all penal institutions have to follow procedures. What if that didn’t work? What then? And then to lie to the hospital you go the drugs from doesn’t exactly scream “Yeah, it’s legal. Trust us.”
Not that the guy is an angel, but I’m not for the death penalty. What if they were wrong. And, why end it for them. Why give them an easy way out. But that’s a whole different topic.
burqa August 10th, 2014 at 11:12 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CELr-M1I1QQ
tiredoftea August 10th, 2014 at 11:51 pm
So, the Bobby Jindal state has stooped to lying to get drugs for the pseudo-scientific state sanctioned murder of one of its citizens? How Christian of them. Compassion at its finest!
Bunya August 11th, 2014 at 1:49 pm
That’s what the “pro life” republicans do, you know. They value life so much, they’re willing stoop to deception to get drugs needed that will eventually be used to kill someone.