Texas Maintains Stockpile of Licensed Lethal Injection Drugs for Executions

State Department of Criminal Justice Public Information Director Jason Clark says Texas has enough licensed lethal injection drugs in its stocks to carry out executing the prisoners on death row.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Texas has enough licensed lethal injection drugs in its stocks to carry out executing the prisoners on death row, state Department of Criminal Justice Public Information Director Jason Clark told Sputnik.

“We obtained a supply of pentobarbital, which will allow the agency to carry out all the executions that are currently scheduled,” Clark said on Wednesday. “The drugs were purchased from a licensed pharmacy that has the ability to compound.”

On Tuesday, the advocacy group Witness to Innocence Director for Membership and Training and former death row inmate Ray Krone told Sputnik that US state governments imported lethal injection drugs from Europe and other parts of the world in secret.

Clark refused to identify what companies supplied Texas with the drugs by name or location and would not comment further.

Texas and Missouri carried out the most executions in 2014, or ten each, followed by Florida with eight executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected forbidding the use of the controversial drug midazolam in executions, ruling that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits cruel or unusual punishment.