Texas: Cleve Foster gets reprieve

Cleve "Sarge" Foster

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the first scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate using pentobarbital.

Cleve Foster was to have been executed Tuesday evening for the 2002 slaying of a Sudanese woman in Fort Worth — the first Texas execution since the state switched to pentobarbital in its lethal three-drug mixture.

On Tuesday morning, the high court agreed to reconsider its January order denying the 47-year-old's appeal. That appeal raised claims of innocence and poor legal help during his trial and early stages of his appeals.

Foster's lawyers also argued that Texas prison officials violated administrative procedures when they announced the switch to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental.

There is a national shortage of sodium thiopental, which has been used already in executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.

Related articles: "Texas DR Inmate Cleve Foster Disputes Use of Execution Drug", The New York Times, April 5, 2011; "REGULATING DEATH IN THE LONE STAR STATE: Texas Law Protects Lizards From Needless Suffering, But Not Human Beings", ACLU, April 3, 2011

Source: AP, April 5, 2011

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