Virginia OKs Plan to Buy Execution Drugs from Secret Pharmacies

The Virginia Legislature accepted Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s plan to hire pharmacies to secretly supply the state with execution drugs, acting one day after the state’s attorney general signed off on the idea.

 
Virginia joins Arkansas, Missouri and Ohio as states that have placed similar shields over the pharmacies that produce lethal drugs and have faced lengthy legal challenges in state and federal courts. In Arkansas, which hoped to resume executions after a ­decade-long break, the legal challenge has delayed several lethal injections scheduled to take place last fall and winter.
 
The night before the General Assembly’s one-day veto session, Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) issued a legal opinion saying that the plan would not violate state or federal laws governing controlled substances or the practice of medicine and pharmacy.
 
McAuliffe (D), who opposes capital punishment but has vowed to support it as a matter of Virginia law, has said the state would not be able to carry out the death penalty if it does not come up with a way to obtain increasingly scarce execution drugs.