Doctors: Execution drugs could help COVID-19 patients

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) — A group of medical professionals is asking death penalty states for medications used both for lethal injections and to help coronavirus patients who are on ventilators. But a doctor who’s behind the request and a death penalty expert says secrecy surrounding executions could hinder those efforts because they don’t know what drugs states have. The letter was sent this month to corrections departments asking states with the death penalty to release drug stockpiles to health care facilities. Many medications used to sedate and immobilize people put on ventilators and to treat their pain are the same drugs that states use to put inmates to death.