{"id":19234,"date":"2017-01-12T05:37:57","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T05:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=19234"},"modified":"2017-01-12T05:37:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T05:37:57","slug":"texas-carries-first-us-execution-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/texas-carries-first-us-execution-2017.html","title":{"rendered":"Texas carries out first US execution of 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Texas carries out first US execution of 2017<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Texas carries out first US execution of 2017:-<\/strong> Texas prison authorities carried out the first US execution of 2017, as controversy continued to swirl around the drugs used to conduct such lethal injections.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christopher Wilkins, 48, was executed at the Texas state penitentiary at Huntsville after the US Supreme Court denied him a last-minute reprieve.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wilkins was convicted of a double murder in 2005, sparked when he said a dealer and his friend sold him a $20 dose of crack cocaine that turned out to be a rock, then laughed at him.<\/span><\/p>\n

During his trial he also admitted to killing a man a day earlier in a dispute over a pay phone, and driving a stolen car into two people on a sidewalk because he thought one had stolen his sunglasses.<\/span><\/p>\n

During his 2008 trial, Wilkins told jurors that the death penalty would be “no big deal,” according to the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in his subsequent appeals, Wilkins, a former truck driver, insisted that he was poorly represented by his lawyers, including one who had already accepted a job with the prosecutor’s office.<\/span><\/p>\n

In most years, Texas executes more convicts than any other state, though last year Georgia surpassed it (with nine executions, to Texas’s seven).<\/span><\/p>\n

Nationwide, capital punishment has been falling for years — last year’s total of 20 executions was a 30-year low, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Texas, like other death-penalty states, has faced a serious shortage of the drugs used in lethal injections, as major pharmaceutical firms — particularly in Europe — have refused to provide them.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, last week Texas sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for impounding a shipment of sodium thiopental that the big southern state had intended to use in executions.<\/span><\/p>\n

In October 2015, both Texas and Arizona had attempted to secretly import vials of that drug from a supplier in India. The FDA seized the drug, saying the use of the barbiturate in executions was illegal.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent years, Texas has used only the drug pentobarbital in executions, according to the Texas Tribune.<\/span><\/p>\n

The controversy over lethal injection appears certain to blow up again this month, as two states — Virginia and Ohio — are planning to carry out executions using midazolam. That use of the drug has been heavily criticized because it is a tranquilizer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/texas-prepares-first-us-execution-2017-amid-dispute-195451003.html<\/span><\/div>\n

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