Texas executions threatened as stocks of death penalty drug run low

Texas, the powerhouse of the death penalty in America which last year executed more than twice the number of prisoners than any other state, is running out of supplies of lethal drugs and may be incapable of carrying out further death sentences beyond June.

Texas has only sufficient quantities in its stores of pentobarbital – the middle drug of the triple lethal injection – to serve in six more executions. That number of executions are scheduled to take place on the state's books over the next four months.

The dwindling supplies in the nation's most prolific death penalty state underline the crisis that is sweeping the 34 states that still have the death sentence on their books. Last summer, Lundbeck, the Danish company that makes pentobarbital under the trademark Nembutal, placed strict restrictions on its distribution to prevent it falling into the hands of US executioners.

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Source: The Guardian, Feb. 14, 2012