DALLAS — Texas can keep secret the name of its supplier for its execution drugs, the state attorney general determined after law enforcement argued that suppliers face serious danger.
In the decision, Attorney General Greg Abbott’s Office cited a ‘‘threat assessment’’ signed by Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw that says pharmacies selling execution drugs face ‘‘a substantial threat of physical harm.’’
Thursday’s decision was a reversal for the state’s top prosecutor on an issue being challenged in several death penalty states. It came the same day that Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said his state should consider creating its own laboratory for execution drugs rather than relying on ‘‘uneasy cooperation’’ with outside sources.
Under Abbott, who is also the Republican nominee for governor in the nation’s busiest death penalty state, the attorney general’s office had since 2010 rejected three similar attempts by the Department of Criminal Justice to keep secret its source of the drugs used to carry out lethal injections.