DALLAS — Lawyers for a Texas man who fatally shot a convenience store clerk are asking a judge to stay his execution by lethal injection set for Wednesday, citing the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee last week.
\n\nThis would be the first execution scheduled in the U.S. since Pike.
\n\nBecause the same drug used in her attempted execution — pentobarbital — would be used in Texas for Jamaal Howard, his attorneys argued that the drug poses the same risks, and said they believe the state’s supply had become degraded.
\n\nPike’s lawyers are seeking more information about what went wrong after the 50-year-old survived two doses of pentobarbital. She was hospitalized and, as of Tuesday, was awake and speaking.
\n\nHer attorneys have alleged her execution was marred by blown veins, where a needle goes all the way through a vein and causes a leak of blood and fluid, as well as Tennessee’s deteriorated pentobarbital and a lack of emergency medical care.
\n\n“There is a similar risk,” Howard’s attorneys wrote, “that Texas’s execution drugs are likewise degraded, as they are far past the original beyond-use dates that the pharmacopeia allows for drugs of this kind.”
\n\nTexas has executed six people…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health