Here’s anAP account of news in the Democrat-Gazette this morning that the state Medical Board is investigating how the Correction Department came to obtain drugs used in recent executions.
Was a doctor involved? The name of a doctor who provides health care at the prison has turned up in paperwork though he and the prison deny a role. Is there a bypass in state law for the prisons to obtain drugs that normally can be obtained only on a doctor’s orders? Does state law, in short, allow the prison system to behave lawlessly? It certainly allows it to operate in secret.
Federal regulators might also have an interest in distribution of drugs outside the normal supply chains. Makers and distributors of the drugs used in Arkansas have said — to the point of suing in one case — that they did not and do not want their drugs used in executions.