The United States Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Herbert Smulls by the State of Missouri, but the argument isn’t because Missouri is doing some strange new combination of untested drugs in a lethal injection method – no, the argument surrounds whether or not the identity of the supplier of pentobarbital must be revealed.

Obviously, lots of people would like to know who is providing pentobarbital to Missouri, since the lack of supply of this drug for lethal injections in other states has led to Ohio and Florida and other states finding new alternative drug cocktails in order to execute people.

(For more information, read our earlier posts regarding the recent Ohio, Oklahoma, and Florida execution processes.)

Meanwhile, news is that other states are considering other forms of execution as lethal execution methods get so difficult based upon drug supply issues.

This wouldn’t be so hard to do as some might think:  many states have valid laws on the books for executions by firing squad, gas chamber, electric chair, and hanging.  See our earlier posts for details. 

Image above:  Gas Chamber used for Executions