A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court's ruling ordering Missouri to identify any supplier of the state's lethal injection drug to two Mississippi death row inmates.
The three-judge 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Friday rejected Missouri's claim that disclosing its pentobarbital source could compromise the state's future ability to obtain that drug.
A spokeswoman for Missouri's attorney general says an appeal is planned to the full 8th Circuit.
Mississippi death row inmates Richard Jordan and Ricky Chase are pressing a legal challenge of Mississippi's three-drug execution protocol.
The inmates question why Mississippi doesn't adopt a one-drug execution method as Missouri has done. They've subpoenaed Missouri for details about its execution drug to meet their legal burden of showing there's a known, available alternative.