By Michael Kiefer
Arizona Republic News
PHOENIX — With two executions scheduled in the next month, the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix has again filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections over its procedure for carrying out lethal injections.
The lawsuit, filed Monday on behalf of three Arizona death row inmates in Florence by Assistant Federal Public Defender Dale Baich, claims that a new execution protocol put in place last month gives too much discretion to the state’s corrections director. It suggests that the slackening of requirements in the new protocol may not pass muster with a U.S. Supreme Court decision regulating executions by lethal injection.
And the office again questions whether execution drugs purchased secretly in Britain are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
A spokesman said the department had not yet examined the suit and could not comment on it.
Full Story: 3 Arizona inmates sue over execution protocol