Texas's new supplier of execution drugs will remain a secret - for now - after the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked a ruling that the prison agency must disclose the information to attorneys for two death-row inmates.
On Friday an appeals court upheld a district judge's ruling from a day earlier that prison officials should disclose the source of a new batch of pentobarbital to the attorneys of the two inmates scheduled to be executed with the drug next month.
The court order allows prison officials to withhold the supplier's name while the justices consider the issue.
Lawyers for the condemned killers filed a lawsuit in the case this week.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) wants to keep the information secret, citing escalating threats of violence against execution drug providers.
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A three-judge panel of the 3rd Texas Court of Appeals earlier on Friday upheld a ruling the previous day from State District Court Judge Suzanne Covington, who said the name of the supplier must be disclosed.
The Texas Attorney General took that ruling to the Texas Supreme Court.
Covington's order would provide the information only to attorneys for condemned prisoners Tommy Lynn Sells and Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas, who argued the risk of them being subjected to unconstitutionally cruel pain could not be evaluated without knowing the source of the pentobarbital used by Texas for executions.
Before the Supreme Court ruling, the inmates' attorneys told the justices "let us all take a breath and admire the pure chutzpah of TDCJ, on the brink of executing these inmates by lethal injection from this new and untried supplier, and claiming that it is the 'victim' here and needing emergency relief".
Sells is set to die on April 3, followed six days later by Hernandez-Llanas.
Sells was condemned for slashing two girls' throats in 1999 at a home near Del Rio; one girl died. He claims to have killed dozens more nationwide.
Hernandez-Llanas was condemned for the 1997 beating death of a man who owned a ranch where Hernandez worked.
