When Hospira, the only U.S. company that manufactures a drug several states use to carry out lethal injections, went public with the news that it would no longer make the product earlier this year, some thought it might disrupt executions across the country, including here in Alabama.
Hospira’s news took on heightened interest in our area last week, when Alabama’s newest candidate for the form of capital punishment – Courtney Lockhart, 26, convicted of the March 2008 abduction and murder of Auburn University student Lauren Burk – was sentenced to die by lethal injection.
For now, however, there isn’t any real cause for concern, says Alabama Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw.
“We’ve had an adequate supply of the drug to carry out scheduled executions,” Crenshaw said.
The “drug” Crenshaw is referring to is sodium thiopental, a powerful anesthetic that he says is used as part of a three-drug protocol in Alabama’s lethal-injection executions. The other two drugs used in the executions are Pavulon, a muscle relaxer, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart of the condemned from beating.
Prisoners sentenced to death in Alabama have the choice of dying by lethal injection or by electric chair, either of which is carried out only at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, said Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson Brian Corbett.
“They, however, must make that choice within 30 days of their being sentenced to death,” said Corbett, who has witnessed at least 20 executions.
The use of sodium thiopental as part of any execution is something that Daniel Rosenberg, a spokesperson for Illinois-based Hospira, says his company never intended.
“We only made it (sodium thiopental) for medicinal purposes, not capital punishment,” said Rosenberg, who added that the sale of the drug is responsible for less than one quarter of one percent of the company’s sales. “We make products to improve people’s lives, and have reached out regularly informing the states of that fact.”
Rosenberg says that Hospira, however, did not take the drug off the market due to its use in capital punishment. He said that Hospira had planned to manufacture the product in Italy and that the government there requested that the measure be taken.
Now that sodium thiopental will no longer be produced, Crenshaw says Alabama and other states that use lethal injection as a form of capital punishment are considering pentobarbital, a short-acting barbiturate, as an alternative. Crenshaw was unaware of how much sodium thiopental the Alabama DOC currently has in reserve or when the switch to pentobarbital might be made by the state in the lethal-injection process.
Corbett declined to answer questions about exactly how much sodium thiopental the Alabama DOC has in reserve. But he did shed some light on the state’s current situation.
“There is no switch to a sodium thiopental alternative imminent, and there is enough of the drug to carry out the requested upcoming execution,” Corbett said.
The state of Alabama instituted lethal injection as form of execution in July 2002, according to the Death Penalty Information Center website.
And although the state is looking into finding alternative drugs to sodium thiopental, there will be enough of the drug available for the scheduled March 31 lethal injection execution of William Glen Boyd, 45, of Calhoun County, said Crenshaw.
Boyd, who was moved to Alabama’s death row in 1987, according to the Alabama DOC’s website, was convicted in the March 1986 robbing, kidnapping and murder of Fred and Evelyn Blackmon.
While he did not comment specifically on his views pertaining to Boyd’s case, Crenshaw said he feels the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for those in society who commit the most heinous crimes.
“It’s a necessary punishment for those who those who take the lives of others,” Crenshaw said.
Source: oanow.com, March 5, 2011
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