KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a judge’s order that Missouri identify to two Mississippi death row inmates the name of any supplier of Missouri’s lethal injection drug, threatening to expose one of the state’s most-guarded secrets. Missouri swiftly said it would appeal.
A three-judge panel with the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court, in a unanimous ruling, rejected Missouri’s claim that disclosing how it gets its pentobarbital could compromise its ability to obtain such chemicals for future executions.