Attorneys for death row inmate Warren Lee Hill will be back in court Thursday to challenge the constitutionality of a Georgia law prohibiting the release of information on where the state acquired its supply of a lethal injection drug. They’re seeking to delay Hill's execution set for Friday.
Records show that one of the drugs that was to be used in Warren Lee Hill's scheduled execution in Georgia last month had expired two weeks before he was scheduled to die. The Department of Corrections tried to change its procedures from three drugs to one — a barbiturate — in an effort to keep the execution on track.
The Georgia Supreme Court halted Monday's scheduled execution of a man convicted of killing a fellow prison inmate, turning aside his claim of mental disability and blocking the planned lethal injection on other grounds.
The Georgia Department of Corrections said in a statement Tuesday it will begin using a single dose of the sedative pentobarbital for the death penalty. It had been using pentobarbital as part of a three-drug combination.
Lawyers for a Georgia man set to be put to death on Wednesday have filed a lawsuit seeking to halt his execution, saying the drug authorities plan to use caused "needless suffering" when it was administered to another death row inmate. Andrew DeYoung is scheduled to die after being convicted of the 1993 slayings of his parents and 14-year-old sister.
A Fulton County judge has temporarily halted the execution of an inmate while she considers his challenge to Georgia's recent switch to a new legal injection drug. Roy Willard Blankenship was to be executed Thursday for the 1978 murder of a Savannah woman. It would be the first in Georgia using pentobarbital as part of its three-drug combination.