The South Dakota Department of Corrections this week officially altered its lethal injection procedures to allow for a one-, two- or three-drug execution process.
Corrections Secretary Denny Kaemingk signed off Wednesday on the new injection policy, according to a news release sent out Friday by DOC spokesman Michael Winder.
The new system will allow the state to use either sodium thiopental or pentobarbital during one-drug lethal injections. It also allows the state to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental as the initial sedative in the other two methods.
On Friday afternoon, Winder confirmed that the state does have pentobarbital in its possession. Because of ongoing litigation, he declined to comment further.
Death penalty opponents long have argued that one-drug executions are less likely to cause unnecessary pain and suffering for condemned inmates.
Travis Schultze, organizer of South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, opposes executions regardless of the method but agrees that a single drug is preferable.
"There are less complications with fewer drugs," he said last week.
The state used a three-drug method to execute Elijah Page in 2007. The next death row inmate in line for execution is Donald Moeller, who kidnapped, raped and killed 9-year-old Becky O'Connell in 1991.
Attorney General Marty Jackley has said Moeller's appeals are likely to run out within two years.
Moeller's appeals cases were given new life this year, however, when his lawyers seized upon a purchase in March of sodium thiopental from Mumbai, India. They challenged the quality of the drug in court documents filed this summer and fall.
Last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration advised South Dakota against using the product, prompting the state to inform Moeller's lawyers in early October of the possible protocol change. Kaemingk's signature this week made it official.
"It remains the state's expectation that the proceedings should reach a conclusion within the two-year time frame," Jackley said earlier this month, even before this week's protocol change. "The state plans to have the substances or means necessary to carry out the jury and the court's sentence."
Sodium thiopental's only U.S. manufacturer ceased production last year, prompting many states to switch to pentobarbital, a sedative used in animal euthanasia. That drug's Danish manufacturer, Lundbeck Inc., decided in August to cease sales of the drug to U.S. states that use lethal injection.
Source: argusleader.com, John Hult, October 22, 2011
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