Texas completes lethal injection not long after Montana judge finds state's lethal drugs problematic

Two notable lethal injection developments in two states on late Tuesday.  Here are the headlines and parts of the stories:

"Texas Executes Juan Garcia, 11th Inmate of Year"

Texas on Tuesday executed its 11th inmate of this year — a man who killed a former missionary during an $8 robbery when he was a teenager.  Juan Garcia, 35, received a lethal injection and was was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. (7:26 p.m. ET).  He was executed for the 1998 murder of Hugh Solano, who had just moved to Houston from Mexico to give his children a better education.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Garcia's clemency bid in a 5-2 vote last week. Garcia in the past fought execution with claims of mental impairment, but had no appeals pending Tuesday morning.

Garcia apologized to Solano's relatives in Spanish ahead of the execution, and Solano's wife and daughter sobbed and told the inmate they loved him.  "The harm that I did to your dad and husband — I hope this brings you closure," Garcia said.  "I never wanted to hurt any of you all."

As the dose of pentobarbital began, he winced, raised his head and then shook it. He gurgled once and snored once before his movement stopped.  He was pronounced dead 12 minutes later.

"Montana Judge Blocks State from Using Execution Drug"

A Helena district judge on Tuesday ruled that Montana’s method of lethal injection does not comply with state law, effectively staying all executions in the state indefinitely.  District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock wrote that the state’s current protocol for executing inmates by lethal injection relies on a drug that is not an “ultra-fast-acting barbiturate,” as required by state law.

The challenge to Montana’s execution methods went to trial last month, when attorneys for prisoners Ronald Allen Smith and William Gollehon — Montana’s only two death row inmates — argued that the drug, pentobarbital, does not adhere to a state law requiring that an “ultra-fast acting” barbiturate must be used during execution.

Montana’s lethal injection law calls for use of an ultra-fast acting barbiturate as well as a paralytic agent. The state’s execution protocol lists sodium pentothal as the barbiturate, with pentobarbital as a substitute; however, sodium pentothal is no longer available for use in executions in the United States, and its importation is illegal because it is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The state’s revised protocol indicates it will use pentobarbital as a substitute barbiturate, despite the fact that pentobarbital is an intermediate-acting barbiturate, which isn’t allowed under the state’s lethal injection protocol. In his order, Sherlock wrote that by using the term “ultra” in its statute, the Legislature limited the state to using only drugs in the fastest category of barbiturates.  Sherlock ruled that “while pentobarbital may operate in a fast nature, it is not ultra-fast as is required to comply with Montana’s execution protocol.”