Hours before Indiana was poised to carry out its first execution of the year, set for Thursday before sunrise, lawyers and supporters for the condemned man rallied to spare his life after new details emerged about the state’s secretive process of obtaining lethal injection drugs.Attorneys for Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, called on Indiana Gov.Mike Braun to halt his lethal injection execution and order an independent review of the state’s procedures over allegations that the state obtained its chemicals from a pharmacy currently on probation and facing suspension of its license.“Laid bare, the apparent conduct here is patently unworthy of the public’s confidence in the solemn exercise of state power in taking a human being’s life in the name of the people,” Joe Perkovich, an attorney for Weisheit, said in a statement Wednesday.Jeffrey Weisheit.Indiana Department of Correction via APWeisheit, who was convicted in the 2010 murders of two young children in a house fire, did not contest his guilt but sought clemency from Braun for his sentence to be commuted to life in prison without parole.
His attorneys are citing Tennessee’s failed lethal injection execution of Christa Pike on Sept.30 in his new application to the governor seeking a reprieve, saying Indiana’s protocol is “more susceptible to catastrophic failures such as the one that placed Ms.
Pike in a coma,” and that the pharmacy listed on a state Department of Correction invoice has a history of “rampant mishandling of drugs.”An updated inventory log provided to NBC News shows that the Department of Correction added six vials of the lethal drug, pentobarbital, to the prison supply on Oct.29.
An invoice included in the reprieve application says that the state paid $275,000 for those vials — far higher than the typical $15,120 to $16,250 price for commercially made injectable pentobarbital.The invoice is heavily redacted and shows neither the date nor supplier for the transaction.Indiana law s...