Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy gave kids the wrong medicine. It forged documents. Its employees didn’t wash their hands adequately. So why did the state with the most executions hire it to make lethal injection drugs?

Google Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy & Gifts in Houston.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which has carried out more executions than any other state, has for the last three and a half years bought drugs for lethal injections from a pharmacy that regulators have repeatedly cited for dangerous practices. The source of the state’s execution drugs has until now been a closely guarded secret. Texas, like other death penalty states, has a law that prevents the disclosure of that information, making it impossible for the public to learn about the manufacturer’s safety record. But documents obtained by BuzzFeed News indicate that one source is Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy in Houston, which has been cited for scores of safety violations in recent years. Its license has been on probation since November 2016, when the Texas State Board of Pharmacy found that it had compounded the wrong drug for three children, sending one to the emergency room, and forged quality control documents. Questions about the source and quality of Texas’s execution drugs have been particularly acute in the past year, since in their final moments of life, five of the 11 inmates who Texas put to death in 2018 said the drug they were injected with, which is supposed to be painless, felt like it was burning as it coursed through their bodies. “I can feel that it does burn. Burning!” Anthony Shore said, his voice rising, as he died in January. Four months later, Juan Castillo swore and said the drug burned and that he could taste it in his throat. In the next few months, inmates Troy Clark, Christopher Young, and Danny Bible all made similar statements as they were dying. A sixth inmate, William Rayford, writhed and shook on the gurney after the drug began to flow into him. Two more inmates are scheduled to be executed in coming days: Joseph Garcia on Dec. 4 and Alvin Braziel on Dec. 11. Texas has faced growing difficulties in securing supplies of lethal drugs in recent years, as manufacturers have become increasingly unwilling to be associated with capital punishment, and the Food and Drug Administration has blocked surreptitious attempts to get the drugs from overseas. The manufacturer of pentobarbital, the substance Texas uses in executions, requires its distributors to sign agreements that they will not sell their drugs to death penalty states. So Texas sought out a compounding pharmacy, which can combine the basic ingredients of known drugs according to a prescription for a specific patient — for example, a child who needs a medicine in a liquid rather than pill form. (The state has also tried importing drugs from a supplier in India, but the FDA seized the shipment.)

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Compounding pharmacies are not subject to the same stringent federal standards as large manufacturers, and the products they make have a significantly higher failure rate and shorter shelf life, one measured in days, than conventionally manufactured drugs. Attorneys for death row inmates have long warned that compounded pentobarbital could expire or degrade over time, putting their clients at risk of a painful death that would amount to torture. “Improper compounding and testing procedures may leave fine particles undetectable by the naked eye in the solution, or larger particles that would not be detected by an untrained eye,” Dr. David Waisel wrote in a 2016 affidavit. “These particles can cause great irritation to the vein, resulting in extraordinary pain.” The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has repeatedly dismissed the attorneys’ concerns, calling them “speculation upon speculation.”

Pat Sullivan / AP, Michael Graczyk / AP Left: The gurney in Huntsville, Texas, where death row inmates are strapped down for lethal injection. Right: An exhibit at the Texas Prison Museum shows the three-chemical mixture used from 1982 until 2012, when it was replaced by a single drug.