Tuesday execution date for former recruiter in Huntsville Texas

Tuesday execution date for former recruiter
By Michael Graczyk - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Apr 4, 2011 19:44:50 EDT
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A condemned inmate moved closer to being the first person to be executed with Texas’ new drug cocktail after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday refused a petition to convert his sentence to life in prison and an appeals court rejected arguments prison officials improperly made the lethal drug swap.

Cleve Foster, 47, is scheduled to die Tuesday nine for the slaying of a Sudanese woman abducted and shot after she met Foster and another man at a Fort Worth bar nine years ago.

Foster would be the third Texas prisoner executed this year, but the first to die since the state switched from using sodium thiopental to pentobarbital in its lethal three-drug mixture. The switch resulted from a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental. Texas is the nation’s busiest death penalty state.

Foster’s attorneys claim Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials didn’t follow administrative procedures properly when they announced the drug change last month. But a state district judge rejected that argument last week and the 3rd Texas Court of Appeals in Austin upheld the ruling Monday. Lawyers said they would take their challenge Tuesday to the Texas Supreme Court.
read more here
Tuesday execution date for former recruiter