Officials from the Department of Criminal Justice in Texas announced that they would be moving away from the three-drug system of execution that they instituted in 1982. Due to the expiration of the state’s supply of pancuronium bromide ( a muscle relaxant) the Texas lethal injection method will be reduced to one drug. Hearn will be receiving a lethal dose of a sedative known as pentobarbital.

In 1998, Hearn received the death sentence for murdering 23-year-old Frank Meziere. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals to stop Hearn’s execution 3.5 hours before Hearn was scheduled to be executed. Strangely, none of the appeals addressed the change in Texas’ execution drug policy.

One of the appeals pushed by Hearn’s lawyer claimed that Hearn’s mental growth was stunted because his mother drank while she was pregnant with him. Former Assistant District Attorney Jason January did not believe that to be a good enough excuse to stop the execution. His claims that citing fetal alcohol syndrome as the cause of his actions “would be a free pass for anyone whose parents drank… No question he had a tough background, but a lot of people have tough backgrounds and work their way out and don’t fill someone’s head with 10 bullets.”

This week Georgia and Texas will be joining Arizona, Ohio, Washington and Idaho in the use of the single-drug procedure.