Inmate to be 1st in Texas executed with new drug
Associated Press
Posted on April 5, 2011 at 7:30 AM
Updated
today at 7:35 AM
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A condemned man is set to be the first executed in Texas with a new drug cocktail.
Cleve Foster is scheduled to die Tuesday evening. He
was convicted in the abduction and slaying of a Sudanese woman nine
years ago.
Foster would be the third prisoner executed in Texas
this year, but the first to die since the state switched from using
sodium thiopental to pentobarbital in its lethal three-drug mixture.
The switch resulted from a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental.
Lawyers will ask the Texas Supreme Court for a
last-minute reprieve Tuesday, arguing that state justice department
officials didn't follow administrative procedures when they announced
the drug change last month.
Pentobarbital, a sedative used in surgery and to euthanize animals, already is used in executions in Ohio and Oklahoma.