Senate Democrats Urge DOJ To Rescind Trump-Era Legal Memo On Executions

A group of nine Senate Democrats urged the Department of Justice to rescind a Trump-era legal opinion stating that the Food and Drug Administration cannot regulate drugs intended for use in executions.

The “deeply flawed” opinion not only increases the risk of botched executions, but also compromises the supply chain of drugs in the U.S., which puts the broader public in danger, the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland. In a second letter, the same group of Senators called on the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration to exercise their authority to regulate how prisons obtain and use drugs to carry out lethal injection executions. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) led the two letters, the existence of which were first reported by HuffPost.

Lethal injection is the most common method of execution in the U.S., but the drugs used were not created to kill death row prisoners. Instead, prison officials acquire medicines like midazolam, pentobarbital and fentanyl, but administer lethal doses to the condemned. The lawmakers argued that the drugs, which are also controlled substances, fall squarely within the FDA and DEA’s regulatory authority. The FDA regulates drugs and the DEA regulates controlled substances ― but the agencies’ approach to enforcement has historically been inconsistent.

“The practices we are seeing amount to illicit drug trafficking by state officials, which endanger the patient population by bringing substandard drugs into the system, and risk causing excruciating and prolonged executions,” Maya Foa, the joint executive director of Reprieve U.S., a human rights nonprofit organization, said in a statement. “Congress is right to raise the