Missouri's attorney general says the state should establish its own laboratory to produce chemicals for use in executions rather than rely on an "uneasy cooperation" with medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies, according to Reuters.
Attorney General Chris Koster spoke Thursday to the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis during a meeting at Lake of Ozarks, Reuters reported. Though a death penalty supporter, the Democratic attorney general cited his own concerns about the death penalty.
"As a matter of policy, Missouri should not be reliant on merchants whose identities must be shielded from public view or who can exercise unacceptable leverage over this profound state act," Koster said, according to Reuters.
Setting up a state laboratory would take compounding pharmacies out of the system, and eliminate the secrecy about where lethal injections drugs are coming from, Koster said, Reuters reported.
Missouri is among several states that purchase execution drugs in secret, according to Reuters. Critics say that if details about the source and testing aren't made public, there is no way to assure that the inmate won't suffer during the execution process.
Koster says the state should not be reliant on merchants whose identities must be shielded from public view, Reuters reported.
The problems obtaining lethal drugs have caused states to change the chemicals used, and to seek out chemicals from compounding pharmacies, which have been only lightly regulated by states and the federal government, according to Reuters. The use of these pharmacies has been the subject of several legal challenges in Missouri and elsewhere.
The compounding pharmacies also typically do not want it publicized that they are involved in providing the execution drugs, and states like Missouri have refused to reveal where they get the drugs they use in lethal injections, Reuters reported.
