Texas to Execute Wesley Ruiz Despite Continued Fight Over State’s Use of Old Lethal Injection Drugs

Texas plans to execute Wesley Ruiz on Wednesday night, despite ongoing controversy over the state’s use of expired drugs to kill prisoners.

Ruiz, 43, was sentenced to death nearly 15 years ago for the 2007 shooting of a senior Dallas police corporal. Mark Nix after a high speed car chase. According to court documents, the chase began as police were looking for a suspect in the murder. Eventually Ruiz’s car slid off the side of the road and Nicks rushed towards it and began smashing the passenger side window with his baton. Ruiz fatally shot him in the chest through the rear passenger window, court documents say.

In a vigorous legal battle, Ruiz and other convicted prisoners argued that the state’s prison system should not be allowed to continue to extend the expiration date of its execution drugs. They argue that the use of old drugs violates the US Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

With fewer pharmacies willing to produce executed drugs, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has for years extended the expiration dates of its existing pentobarbital, the only drug used in Texas executions, after retesting potency levels. Previous legal battles to stop the practice have failed in court.

In the current lawsuit, Texas high courts have refused to halt the January execution, overturning a temporary state lower court order that only new execution drugs be used in prisons until the lawsuit goes to trial in March. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that a lower court could not issue an order that would appear to reverse an execution.

The prisoner’s lawyers and the county court judge speculated, based on the latest published reports for November and the TDCJ’s silence, that the only execution drugs that were in stock at the prison were several years past their expiration date.

A few minutes after the final decisions of the courts on January 10, Robert Fratta was executed.

In none of the follow-up lawsuits or hour-long hearings did TDCJ’s attorneys tell the courts that the agency had recently obtained new drugs, as it had discovered by The Texas Tribune last week. Logs of pentobarbital supplies obtained at the request of the public showed that the prison received eight new doses on January 5, five days before Fratta’s execution. A new vial of drugs was used to execute Fratta.

“The TDCJ knew it had other execution chemicals – and indeed used those chemicals – but the TDCJ withheld that information from Mr. Fratta and the courts, leading everyone, including the public, to believe they only had chemicals that have been found to cause pain,” Tivon Shardle, a federal attorney representing Fratta, said in a statement last week.

TDCJ spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez said the agency continued to fight the lawsuit after the new drugs arrived, in part because officials were unsure if the new doses would be used in upcoming executions.

Hernandez did not explain why the agency and the Texas Attorney General’s Office did not disclose the new drugs in court and rebut the stated notion that TDCJ only had old vials.

“Basically, we want to keep the ability to use any drugs in our arsenal because we believe they can be used in executions,” Hernandez told the Tribune last week.

Texas has dismissed claims that its process of retesting and extending expiration dates is known to be torturous, as executions carried out using such drugs usually take place without any sign of pain. The state argued that state regulations on the use of pharmaceuticals should not apply to executions.

In any case, the shipment of the new drugs likely could not have been used to execute Fratta or be available to execute Ruiz on Wednesday, unless an appeals court overturned a temporary injunction issued by state circuit judge Katherine Mauzy.

In her short-lived order, Mozi required the TDCJ to use pentobarbital within the time limits set by the Texas Pharmacy Law’s storage requirements. Such conditions set the shelf life of compound pentobarbital at 45 days when stored frozen, but only 72 hours when stored in a refrigerator or 24 hours when stored at room temperature, according to court briefings.

In past laboratory test reports on pentobarbital TDCJ, the storage conditions of the substance are listed as “room temperature”. Hernandez did not elaborate on how his stock of pentobarbital is currently stored, but said she understands that new drugs would still not be in line with Mozi’s order.

“You’re making the assumption that the new drugs meet the requirements of the Texas Pharmacy Act,” she said. – It’s just a guess.

In addition to a dormant fight over old drugs in Travis County, Ruiz asked the trial court in Dallas County to stay his execution due to lethal drug concerns. On Tuesday, the court dismissed his appeal, with an appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals pending on Tuesday afternoon.

Ruiz also still had a pending U.S. Supreme Court appeal in which he argued that jurors relied on “overtly racist” and “blatantly anti-Spanish stereotypes” when considering whether he should be sentenced to death.

His lawyers cited recent affidavits from Ruiz’s jurors who use racist language to describe Ruiz and Latinos, including a foreman calling him a “thug and a punk” and saying that he is afraid of Latinos in the courtroom because he thinks they are gang members. He also described how he once felt threatened while driving because someone he thought was Mexican was driving behind him in a “luxury car”. According to the statement, the foreman said he persuaded another juror to opt for the death penalty despite her hesitation.

Texas courts have so far rejected the appeal because it was filed late.

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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