Kentucky and Tennessee Turn Over a Drug Used in Executions

Kentucky and Tennessee turned over their supplies of a drug used in executions to the federal authorities on Friday, weeks after Georgia’s supply was seized because of questions about how it had been imported.

Production of the drug, sodium thiopental, a sedative widely used in lethal injections, was discontinued in January after a shortage that lasted months, leaving many states scrambling to find alternative supplies. The drug, which had been manufactured by Hospira Inc., was used in 34 of the 35 states that carry out lethal injections.

Kentucky’s sodium thiopental was “turned over to the D.E.A. for its use as evidence in a case in another jurisdiction,” Jennifer Brislin, director of communications for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, said in an e-mail. She would not say where the jurisdiction was or comment on the investigation.

“We are fully cooperating with the D.E.A.,” Ms. Brislin said, referring to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Kentucky obtained its supply of the drug, enough to carry out three executions, from CorrectHealth, a private Georgia correctional health company, Ms. Brislin said, and the drug’s packaging indicated it had been manufactured by an Austrian company.

In March, the drug enforcement agency seized Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental weeks after records procured by a defense attorney for a man on death row showed that the state had purchased it from a London supplier operating out of a driving school. A Kentucky defense attorney has also questioned the legality of the state’s supply.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Dorinda Carter, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said the department turned had over 44 vials of the drug. The state did “not purchase any drugs from a foreign supplier,” Ms. Carter wrote in an e-mail.

“There is no allegation that TN has done anything improper,” she wrote.

Tennessee has an execution scheduled for Sept. 13, but Ms. Carter did not say what drug would be used.

American plants stopped making sodium thiopental — one of three drugs used in lethal injections — in 2009. Hospira stopped producing it in January after it was unable guarantee to the authorities in Italy, where it was to be made, that it would not be used for capital punishment.

California and Arizona obtained shipments of the drug from England last fall, but the British government has since refused to export drugs used for execution. The Associated Press reported that at least four other states, including Tennessee, had obtained the drug from overseas.

Source: The New York Times, April 1, 2011

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