Watch Texas Uses Single-Drug Lethal Injection in Execution on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
RAY SUAREZ: Texas executed a death row inmate with a single-sedative drug for the first time last night. He was 33-year-old convicted murderer Yokamon Hearn. The state had used pentobarbital as part of a three-drug cocktail in lethal injections since 1982, but never on its own.
The change in policy follows other states nationwide that have made the same switch because of a lack of supply of another lethal drug. The Georgia Department of Corrections made the same change this week to the single dose, postponed the execution of inmate Warren Hill until Monday.
Michael Graczyk of The Associated Press has witnessed more than 300 executions in the state of Texas. I spoke with him a short time ago.
Michael Graczyk, welcome.
What argument did Yokamon Hearn's lawyers use to delay the carrying out of the execution in order to stop it altogether?
MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press: Well, they had raised two specific questions before the Supreme Court.
The first one was that he had suffered fetal alcohol syndrome that had stunted his mental development as a result of his mother taking quantities of alcohol when she was pregnant with him. Although his I.Q. tests showed that he was above the levels we generally consider the threshold for mental impairment, they said that that should be considered -- the fetal alcohol syndrome should be considered as a circumstance to allow the I.Q. tests to be somewhat -- considered as a less -- less effect.
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