On March 27, Amnesty International released its annual survey on the use of capital punishment worldwide, titled Death Sentences and Executions 2011. The report illustrated that the use of the death penalty has continued to decline around the world. At the end of 2011, there were 140 countries considered abolitionist in law or practice, while only 20 countries were known to have put prisoners to death in 2011. The United States was the only country in the Western hemisphere or among the G8 nations to carry out executions, and was the fifth country in terms of known executions carried out in the world, behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. China reportedly conducts thousands of executions in a year, but the exact number is not known. With 13 executions, Texas would have ranked 7th as an independent country, between North Korea and Somalia. The report nevertheless highlighted signs of substantially reduced support for the death penalty in the U.S., including the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, a moratorium on executions in Oregon, a significant decline nationally in death sentences, and a smaller decline in executions in 2011.
In one of the most comprehensive investigations ever undertaken about the execution of a possibly innocent defendant, Professor James Liebman and other researchers at Columbia University Law School have published a groundbreaking report on the case of Carlos DeLuna (pictured), who was executed in Texas in 1989. This "Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution" is being published today (May 15) in Columbia's Human Rights Law Review. Prof. Liebman concluded DeLuna was innocent and was wrongly convicted "on the thinnest of evidence: a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification and no corroborating forensics." DeLuna maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest until his execution, claiming that the actual culprit was Carlos Hernandez, who looked so similar to DeLuna that friends and family had mistaken photos of the two men for each other. Prosecutors called Hernandez a "phantom" of DeLuna's imagination, although Hernandez was known to police and prosecutors because of his history of violent crimes, including armed robberies and an arrest for a murder similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Liebman's investigation found that Hernandez "spent years bragging around Corpus Christi that he, not his tocayo - his namesake and 'twin' - Carlos DeLuna, killed Wanda Lopez."
Recently published historical research led by Professor Austin Sarat (pictured) of Amherst College examines the way gruesome executions were reported in the media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Prof. Sarat's study found that newspapers generally presented two competing narratives in their coverage: “a sensationalist narrative, which played up the gruesomeness of botched execution[s], and an opposing, recuperative narrative, which sought to differentiate [the] law’s violence from violence outside the law.” (Article abstract) Gruesome executions were put into a larger context of an orderly and justified punishmnet: "They situated such executions within a framework that justified capital punishment as the proper way to avenge violent crimes. Problems were attributed to unavoidable human errors or technological breakdowns, and executions, even when they became gruesome spectacles, generally did not seem to inflict undue suffering on the condemned." The report, Gruesome Spectacles: The Cultural Reception of Botched Executions in America, reviewed newspaper accounts of botched executions between 1890 and 1920, and was published in inaugural issue of the British Journal of American Legal Studies. 
Controversies surrounding the lethal drugs used in U.S. executions continue to arise in many states. Documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal the secretive process in which the Delaware Department of Corrections obtained the drugs necessary for the its lethal injection process. Delaware officials solicited the help of the state’s Economic Development Director, Alan Levin, in obtaining lethal injection drugs after its previous supply expired in 2005. Levin, the former head of the Happy Harry’s drugstore chain, contacted the CEO of Cardinal Health Inc., a supplier of pentobarbital. "I was happy to help facilitate it," said Levin, explaining that Happy Harry's, which he sold in 2006 to Walgreen Co., had done business with Cardinal for a decade or more. "I understand the judicial system," said Levin, a former prosecutor who added that he believes in the death penalty. DOC Commissioner Carl Danberg wrote in an e-mail to key lieutenants, “This is NOT for discussion or distribution to anyone, including your own staff until we get a chance to discuss… Emphasize that I do not want this discussed yet. Certainly not until the drugs are on hand. I am not even telling the AG yet.” The batch of drugs was delivered last June and was used in the lethal injection of Shannon Johnson, who was executed on April 20.
On March 27, a federal District Court held that foreign-manufactured sodium thiopental was improperly approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in executions. Judge Richard Leon (pictured) of the District Court of the District of Columbia ordered any correctional departments in possession of the drug to return it to the FDA. The ruling granted summary judgment in favor of a lawsuit filed by death row inmates in Arizona, California, and Tennessee against the FDA. Those states, along with several others, had obtained sodium thiopental, an anesthetic used in lethal injections, from foreign sources after the sole U.S. manufacturer ceased production. The inmates contended "that unapproved foreign thiopental will fail to anesthetize plaintiffs properly during execution, causing conscious suffocation, pain, and cardiac arrest." According to Judge Leon, the foreign sodium thiopental "is a misbranded drug and an unapproved new drug" and "the FDA neither approved nor reviewed thiopental for safety and effectiveness." A January 2011 statement released by the FDA said "[r]eviewing substances imported or used for the purpose of state-authorized lethal injection clearly falls outside of FDA's explicit public health role." The judge disagreed, saying "the FDA appears to be simply wrapping itself in the flag of law enforcement discretion to justify its authority and masquerade an otherwise seemingly callous indifference to the health consequences of those imminently facing the executioner's needle."