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Arizona Proceeds With Execution Using Foreign Made Pentathol
We previously reported on California’s Supreme Court blocking an execution due to sodium pentathol production shortages and now the first case has come before the Supreme Court asking whether non-FDA approved formulations of the drug can be used. With the court giving the green light it is likely executions can resume in many states where they have come to a halt. If they can get their hands on the IV paralytic that is also in short supply used to kill that is.
From Andrew Cohen at Politics Daily:
Prison officials in Arizona executed convicted murderer Jeffrey Landrigan Tuesday night, shortly after the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, rejected a late challenge from his lawyers based upon questions about the origins and ingredients of one of the drugs used in the lethal injection procedure. Landrigan was executed for the December 1989 murder of Charles Dean Dyer. He committed that crime after escaping from an Oklahoma prison, where he had been held after being convicted of murdering another man.
The high court’s conclusive action capped a chaotic week of legal wrangling and conflict between Arizona officials and the lower federal courts. A trial judge in Phoenix and a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California both had ordered a delay of Landrigan’s execution after state prison officials refused to disclose where they had obtained their dose of sodium thiopental, known in the United States as sodium pentathol, the barbiturate often used to sedate death row inmates before they receive their lethal dose of potassium chloride.
When U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver blocked the Landrigan execution Monday, she rooted her decision in the language of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. She ruled that a nationwide shortage of thiopental raised legitimate questions about whether foreign, non-FDA-approved thiopental would be inserted in Landrigan’s veins. And that, in turn, raised legitimate questions about whether those drugs would have side effects or contaminants or deficiencies that would cause Landrigan undue (unconstitutional) pain during his execution.Because of Arizona’s refusal to share relevant information about how it got its thiopental, Judge Silver wrote, the court “is unable to determine whether the drug was produced by a foreign company that follows standard operating procedures for the drug’s manufacture or that has no history of contamination in manufacturing the product. Absent such evidence, the Court must accept Plaintiff’s factual showing that such drugs are more likely to contain harmful contaminants.” This speculation, the Supreme Court subsequently ruled, was not enough to warrant additional delays in Landrigan’s execution.
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[...] reported on the problems over at Hospira Pharmaceuticals which led to propofol recalls and disruption of sodium thiopental production, the anesthetic used to execute people. It just got [...]