Go here to read a bunch of emails from California prison officials to various places around the US and abroad trying to get a supply of lethal injection drugs. At one point, they complain about Texas not sharing its supply of drugs. The emails were obtained by the ACLU of Northern California through a public information request.

From the ACLUNC website:

On November 17, 2010, the ACLU-NC filed a suit under the California Public Records Act to demand records from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) about its recent acquisition of sodium thiopental, a controlled substance used as part of California’s lethal injection protocol for executing death row inmates. 

The below “Execution Procedure” document from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is dated 2008. We do not know if there have been any changes adopted since then.

Execution Procedure TDCJ 2008

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided tonight to halt a Houston hearing about the death penalty.

A second day of testimony in the hearing was held today. Lawyers for accused killer John Green argue that Texas executes innocent people and does not follow the constitution. Lawyers for the District Attorney’s Office say arguments against the use of the death penalty in other cases should not apply to green’s case.

The appeals court wants both sides to submit legal briefs with their stated positions within the next 15 days.

We can now add muteness to the list of flaws in the Texas death penalty. Most Texans probably like to think they stand tall when the chips are down, but Texas prosecutors are choosing to stand mute, and are playing games when a man is on trial for his life in a Houston courtroom.

The Houston Chronicle reports,

Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos on Monday ordered prosecutors in her office to “stand mute” during a rare hearing to determine whether the death penalty in Texas is unconstitutional.

The last-ditch strategy to end state District Judge Kevin Fine’s judicial inquiry into the procedures surrounding the state’s death penalty statute makes an observer out of the largest district attorney’s office in Texas.

The hearing, stemming from a death penalty case before Fine’s court, began Monday and is expected to last two weeks.

“It’s arrogant, and it’s contemptuous for the state to decide to not participate when they’re trying to put my client to death,” defense lawyer Casey Keirnan said in court.

Prosecutor Alan Curry told Fine he was ordered to answer that he is to remain mute instead of objecting, cross-examining or putting on witnesses at the hearing.
“I’m not allowing you to not participate,” Fine said.

Curry said he and other prosecutors will remain seated at counsel tables, but that they will not speak.

Fine could have held the office in contempt for the move. Instead of deadlocking the proceedings, Fine allowed prosecutors to listen without objection to testimony from anti-death penalty experts, legal scholars and investigators.

Death penalty opponents and courthouse observers turned out in droves early Monday because the hearing is believed to be the first time a court will consider the constitutionality of the Texas death penalty in the context of analyzing whether there is a substantial risk of convicting the innocent.

Yesterday, Texas Moratorium Network attended the first day of the hearing in Houston on the constitutionality of the Texas death penalty as applied. TMN participated in a demonstration outside the courthouse along with friends from Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Witness to Innocence and Mexicanos en Accion.

Watch video from KHOU.

Watch Video from KHTV.