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RICHMOND, Va., April 11 (UPI) -- Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe scrapped a proposal to let his state use the electric chair when it cannot find lethal-injection drugs, instead proposing Monday to allow the state to hire a pharmacy to secretly produce a special batch. The Democratic governor faced a midnight deadline Sunday to veto or amend a bill from the General Assembly.
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His decision, which failed to get legislative approval in 2015, would allow the Department of Corrections to secretly make the drugs through compounding pharmacies and use them without public scrutiny. These pharmacies do not have the same U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations as large drug makers.
Legislators will decide April 20 whether to accept the amendment.
McAuliffe, who supports the death penalty, told Republicans who control the General Assembly: ''A veto of this bill will halt capital punishment in the commonwealth of Virginia."
House Bill 815 would have allowed the state to execute an inmate with an electric chair if it could not acquire the drugs to carry out a lethal injection.
Florida, Texas and Ohio have similar laws to what McAuliffe proposes.
States have struggled to carry out capital punishment with the lethal injection drugs scarce.
Last year, the Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam in lethal injections. The drug has become a last resort for many states.
On April 29, 2014, Clayton Lockett survived 43 minutes after he was injected the drug in Oklahoma.
The last execution by electric chair in the United State was in 2013 in Virginia. Robert Gleason Jr. strangled his prison cellmate and made good on a vow to continue killing if he wasn't executed. He chose the chair.
Only eight states, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, still authorize use of the electric chair, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
