REPRIEVE

Supreme Court Blocks Execution

Texas would have used controversial new chemicals.

Cleve Foster won’t be executed for murder—at least not yet. The Supreme Court has blocked his scheduled execution in Texas Tuesday, for the killing of a woman he met in a Fort Worth bar in 2002. Foster challenged whether he received effective counsel during his trial, as well as the method of execution—a new method that uses pentobarbital in response to a shortage of the usual drugs used for lethal injections. Two states have used pentobarbital in executions, but it remains controversial. It’s the second 11th-hour stay this year for Foster, who got another reprieve from the Supreme Court in January, hours before his scheduled death and after he’d eaten what would have been his last meal.