Update: Hours before he was to be put to death by lethal injection, a stay was granted by the Fifth Circuit in the scheduled execution of James Campbell.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Tom Hargis, Director of Communications, ACLU of Texas, 832.291.4776, [email protected]
A federal appeals court today turned down a request for a stay of execution from Robert James Campbell. Shortly afterward, attorneys for Campbell filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If Texas executes Campbell as planned, he will be the first person executed in the country since the state of Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett. In the wake of that controversy, Governor Rick Perry and officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice have celebrated the state’s “efficient” use of the death penalty, while keeping the source for its supplier of barbiturate pentobarbital, the drug the state uses in its executions, a secret from the public.
The following is a statement from Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas:
“If Governor Perry insists on bragging about Texas’s high use of the death penalty, why keep the source of the state’s execution drug shrouded in secrecy?” said Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. “A dozen innocent men have been exonerated from death row in Texas. Meanwhile, James Campbell not only received inadequate counsel, but suffers from intellectual disabilities. We call on the state to grant a stay of execution and launch an internal review of Texas's troubled history with the death penalty.”
