Ohio's vanishing stock of execution drugs is yet another sign that it's time to eliminate the death penalty in Ohio

There's a reason most doctors won't administer the lethal drugs now used to execute prisoners under sentence of death. It's the same reason Ohio is about to run out of pentobarbital, the current drug of choice on Death Row: Most medical professionals and many of those who manufacture drugs do not want to participate in the taking of a human life.

Ohio's depleted stock of death-penalty drugs is yet another reason why Ohio and other states that still execute prisoners should reconsider on moral, ethical, legal and practical grounds.

Pentobarbital is essentially the same drug used to put many animals to sleep. Like other drugs previously used for human executions, how humanely it executes a grown man (or woman) has never been systematically studied.

A federal court filing earlier this month suggested Ohio will run out of pentobarbital after executing Garfield Heights killer Harry Mitts Jr. on Sept. 25. Mitts was convicted of murdering one of his neighbors in what was believed to be a racially motivated assault and then killing a Garfield Heights police sergeant.

That means Ohio will need another execution plan for Ronald Phillips of Akron, scheduled to die in November for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl.

The Associated Press reports that will be the third time Ohio has had to shift drug execution protocols.

Ohio first switched to a single drug method in 2009 after the botched execution of Romell Broom, called off after numerous unsuccessful efforts to find a vein to inject the three-drug cocktail then used to execute prisoners. Questions also were raised about whether the paralytic drug in that cocktail prevented the prisoner from expressing pain during the execution.

Ohio then moved to a single drug, sodium thiopental, but had to switch again in 2011 to pentobarbital.

The problem, according to The New York Times, is that many drug makers will no longer supply drugs to prisons to be used in executions. Pentobarbital supplies are dwindling because the Danish manufacturer restricted supplies to U.S. corrections departments, the Times reported.

In Georgia, documents the AP obtained show the state turned to a compounding pharmacy for pentobarbital after its supply of conventionally manufactured pentobarbital expired in March. Yet questions have been raised about quality control at some compounding pharmacies after more than 50 people died from contaminated drugs distributed by the New England Compounding Center last year.

Missouri meanwhile is moving ahead with plans to use propofol, the drug that contributed to the death of Michael Jackson.

It's hard to feel sympathy for murderers and rapists. But if the state is going to assume the awesome burden of taking a human life, it better have the best people and the best drugs to do it, and that clearly isn't happening.

It is time to end the death penalty and the inequities and injustices it fosters, including the impact it has on those who must carry it out, along with all the other practical, moral and ethical problems it engenders.

Source: Editorial, Cleveland.com, Sept. 2, 2013