On Tuesday May 3rd 2022, the Arizona State Supreme Court issued an execution warrant for Frank Atwood. His execution date is set for June 8th, 2022.
Previously, the Arizona Courts postponed the execution because the State could not prove that it's compounded pentobarbital (lethal injection drug) had an expiration date of greater than 45 days after it was compounded. The pharmacist who provided the drugs also confirmed the scientific literature and stated that the drugs did indeed have an expiration date of only 45 days. The AZ Department of Correction execution protocol states that “ADC will only use chemicals in an execution that have an expiration or beyond-use date that is after the date that an execution is carried out.” This means that the drugs must have an expiration date of greater than 45 days in order to be viable for use in an execution.
Yet, recently the Attorney General's office claimed that it did "testing" on the compounded drug and determined that it has an expiration date of greater than 90 days. The testing results they provided did not show any evidence of a longer expiration date or that they followed the established testing protocol:
- A quantitative analysis must be performed to determine viability of the drug
- It must be performed on the batch to be used for execution
All of the pages of the testing results report were heavily redacted, and contained nothing establishing any particular beyond-use date (expiration date), let alone the “beyond-use date of at least 90 days” the State has claimed.
The testing results did, however, reveal one thing with relative clarity: testing was performed on at least two different batches of compounded pentobarbital, rather than the single batch designated for use in the execution.
In addition, the potency of drugs is expected to decrease over time as the substances degrade. But these results revealed an unexpected increase in potency upon the fourth test, which greatly calls into question the reliability of the testing performed.
To justify its failure to provide factual support for its motion - the State suggested “this Court need not make any factual findings regarding the beyond-use (expiration) date of the State’s compounded pentobarbital or the testing that established it.”
Unfortunately, the Arizona State Supreme Court does not care that the Attorney General did not follow the rules, and issued the warrant for execution.
In related news, on Monday, the Tennessee Governor (Republican) put a halt on all executions in his state until an independent review of the lethal injection drugs can be performed:
Tenessee Governor Halts Executions
He stated, "...the death penalty is an extremely serious matter, and I expect the Tennessee Department of Correction to leave no question that procedures are correctly followed.”
We request you to contact Arizona Governor Doug Ducey as soon as possible and insist that he follows the Tennessee Governor's lead and halts the upcoming executions since the State Attorney General has provided no real proof that the drugs he plans to use for execution are viable and has done everything in the shadow of secrecy.
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Time is running out for Frank!