USA - Texas. Judge orders Texas to release information on execution drugs.

Judge orders Texas to release information on execution drugs. Texas prison officials were ordered today to disclose to attorneys for two execution-bound convicts the supplier of a new batch of lethal injection drugs to be used to kill them. But state District Judge Suzanne Covington declined to make the information public, agreeing with the state's argument that disclosure would threaten the future availability of pentobarbital. Past court decisions and rulings by the state attorney general have held that the identities of the suppliers and details about the drugs, including amounts and costs, are public information. But after recently announcing that they had obtained a new supply of pentobarbital, to replace existing supplies that expire April 1, state officials had refused to release those details. The two inmates - Tommy Lynn Sells and Ramiro Hernandez Llanas - are scheduled for execution in April. They filed a lawsuit yesterday seeking information on the execution drugs, arguing that they have the right to know about the suppliers and the drugs that will end their lives. During a morning court hearing, Assistant Attorney General Nicole Bunker-Henderson said recent threats against unidentified execution drug manufacturers necessitates the secrecy, and that a recent threat assessment by police agencies suggests that pharmacists who are making the drugs might face physical danger. But Austin attorney Philip Durst, representing the condemned men, said they have a right to know the origin of the drugs and other details about doses and purity. He challenged the state's assertion that the information should remain a state secret, saying the prisoners cannot evaluate their right to know whether their execution could result in unconstitutionally cruel pain. Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the agency would appeal the ruling. Sells is scheduled for execution on April 3, and Hernandez Llanas on April 9. Sells, 49, was sentenced to death in a 1999 throat-slashing attack at a home that left one girl dead and a second critically wounded. Hernandez Llanas, 44, was given a death sentence for the 1997 beating death of a rancher for whom he worked as a hired hand.