Texas Sends Virginia Execution Drug:  Virginia has an execution scheduled for Thursday and has received assistance from Texas to provide the state with pentobarbital, a lethal drug used in executions.  Michael Graczyk and Alanna Durkin of the AP reports that the three vials given to Virginia by Texas were legally purchased from a compounding pharmacy.  Death penalty opponents are upset because Texas is not legally obliged to reveal the pharmacy's identity.  Lawyers for Richard Glossip, a condemned Oklahoma inmate set to die this week, are challenging the trade, arguing that due to the difficulty of obtaining pentobarbital, Glossip faces lethal injection by midazolam, an alternative sedative.  Glossip also claims that the Texas-Virginia trade is proof that pentobarbital is still available.  Virginia will use the Texas-provided pentobarbital this week to execute 49-year-old Alfredo Rolando Prieto for the 1988 slaying of a young couple, who at the time of his conviction was already on death row in California for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl.

Prop 47 Could Purge DNA Database:  The fate of an estimated half-million DNA samples collected from felony arrestees in California is in question following the latest court battle over Proposition 47, the 2014 voter-approved measure which reduces  certain felonies to misdemeanors.  Kristina Davis of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the latest court ruling involved a San Diego teenager who applied to have his felony commercial burglary charge reclassified to a misdemeanor. That request was granted by the state's 4^th District Court of Appeal, which also held that "voters intended Proposition 47's retroactive relief to result in the purging of existing DNA samples."  Approximately 2.5 million DNA samples are stored in California's Data Bank, and from April to June of this year, hits from the database aided 48,000 investigations.  Escondido Police Chief Craig Carter believes that "the removal of such a large portion of the DNA database would be detrimental to law enforcement."

AB 109 Rules Set Violent Parolee Free:  Last July, a parolee and known gang member from Indio, California, shot his girlfriend in the leg at an apartment complex and was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm.  Two weeks later, he was granted bail and released, returning to his girlfriend's apartment complex to shoot her again, this time paralyzing her.  Brooke Beare of KESQ reports that following 25-year-old Lawrence Moreno's arrest for the first shooting in July, a parole hold -- a no-bail status to ensure arrestees remain behind bars -- was placed on him, but it was then lifted allowing a judge to release Moreno on bail so that he could attempt to murder his girlfriend a second time.  Moreno was tracked to his home two days after the second shooting, and charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count each of burglary, witness intimidation and being a felon in possession of a firearm, in addition to nine sentence-enhancing allegations.

Note:  Prior to AB 109, a law enacted by Gov. Brown in 2011, a violent gangbanging felon such as Moreno would have been held without bail for shooting his girlfriend.  By simply being a felon in possession of a firearm, a violation of his parole conditions, his parole could have been revoked by the state, sending him back to prison for one year.  However, post-AB 109, parole violators are the responsibility of the county rather than the state, enabling judges to grant bail to violent parolees in spite of the consequences to public safety.