Regulating Death in the Lone Star State: Texas Law Protects Lizards from Needless Suffering, but not Human Beings

As Texas prepared to execute Cleve Foster on April 5, 2011, disturbing new facts emerged in relation to Texas’ lethal injection protocol. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) announced its intention to begin using a new drug in the lethal injection process, without allowing for any expert analysis or public scrutiny of the suitability of the new drug—pentobarbital. In fact, there is no evidence that Texas has ever engaged in a meaningful assessment of whether the drug can or should be used in combination with the other two drugs administered in lethal injections, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. This lack of assessment and transparency is even more troubling given the concerns of prominent anesthesiologists about the efficacy of pentobarbital in the execution of human beings and the risk that the three drugs used in combination could lead to an excruciatingly painful death.

Texas’ lax attitude regarding the taking of human life contrasts sharply with its enactment of detailed regulations to ensure that animals suffer no pain when they are euthanized. Animal euthanasia laws provide strict certification requirements for euthanasia technicians and regulate acceptable methods of intravenous euthanasia down to the correct dosage per kilogram of an animal’s body weight. By contrast, the Texas legislature has failed to enact any legislation to ensure that the individuals responsible for extinguishing human life are properly trained and qualified, and that the drugs they administer are both effective and humane. Instead, the legislature has left the lethal injection protocol to the discretion of the director of the Correctional Institutions Division of the TDCJ – a prison official with no medical training. In Texas, men and women are put to death not under the supervision of doctors and anesthesiologists—or even licensed veterinarians—but at the hands of a prison lethal injection team whose medical training is limited. It is no exaggeration to say that Texas regulates the euthanasia of reptiles more strictly than the execution of human beings.