Missouri death-row inmate: State using expired drug

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A Missouri death-row inmate scheduled for execution this month says the state prison system is improperly storing expired doses of a new lethal injection drug provided by an Oklahoma pharmacy that's not licensed to do business in the neighboring state.

Attorneys for Herbert Smulls filed a complaint with the Oklahoma State Board of Pharmacy on Friday. They want the board to recall an "expired, unsafe" batch of the sedative pentobarbital provided to Missouri by an unidentified Oklahoma compounding pharmacy. The complaint says the pharmacy gave erroneous instructions to store the drug at room temperature.

Missouri switched to its one-drug execution method late last year and has since killed two inmates. The complaint includes Missouri state records showing the pentobarbital given to both inmates had expired eight to 10 days earlier.

Source: The Associated Press, January 18, 2014

Tennessee Supreme Court reschedules execution in light of lethal injection questions

The Tennessee Supreme Court has rescheduled the execution of murderer Billy Ray Irick.

Irick, who raped and killed a 7-year-old Knoxville girl he had been baby-sitting in 1985, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 15 in a wave of executions Tennessee is seeking to carry out. But the Supreme Court rescheduled the execution for Oct. 7, 2014, because of new legal challenges to the way Tennessee plans to put the condemned to death.

Tennessee's executions have been been on hold for at least 2 years because a key lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental, became unavailable. It wasn't until September of this year that the state settled on a replacement, the anasthetic pentobarbital, often used in animal euthanasia.

State officials, thinking the drug switch cleared the way to begin executions, have asked the Supreme Court for dates to execute at least 11 inmates. So far, it has only scheduled Irick and Nickolus Johnson, who is scheduled to be put to death April 22 for killing a Bristol police officer in 2004.

But the court on Tuesday said that new legal challenges questioning the use of pentobarbital must be answered before it can be used in an execution.

"Mr. Irick is correct that currently, there is no controlling law in Tennessee on the constitutionality of the use of the single drug, Pentobarbital, to execute a death row inmate," the court said in its order postponing Irick's execution.

The legal challenge is being fought by attorneys for at least 10 of the condemned the state is looking to execute.

"We are grateful for the Tennessee Supreme Court's order. All of the parties have agreed to an expedited schedule to litigate the serious questions which surround the new lethal injection protocol," said Kelley Henry, who supervises capital punishment defense cases with the Federal Public Defender's Office in Nashville and represents several of those the state is looking to execute. "Our Supreme Court recognized that these are important constitutional issues which have never been litigated in this State. We look forward to the opportunity to have our day in Court."

Source: The Tennessean, December 12, 2013

Missouri executes Allen Nicklasson

Allen Nicklasson

Late Wednesday night, Nicklasson was put to death for Richard Drummond's killing — nearly 23 hours after he was originally scheduled to die. It was the second execution in Missouri in three weeks after a nearly three-year hiatus. Racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was executed Nov. 20.

The executions also were the first since Missouri switched from a three-drug protocol to use of a single drug, pentobarbital.

Nicklasson, 41, was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m. Wednesday, eight minutes after the process began. His eyes remained closed throughout and he showed little reaction to the drug, briefly breathing heavily about 2 minutes into the process. He offered no final words.

Missouri Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike O'Connell said Nicklasson prayed briefly with the prison chaplain about 20 minutes before the execution. No one from his family or the victim's family attended.

The execution was the end of a life troubled almost from the start. Nicklasson grew up in Kansas City, Mo., in a fatherless home. His mother was a mentally ill stripper who brought home an assortment of men, many of whom abused her son. Nicklasson died bearing the scar from where one of the men burned him.

Nicklasson declined interviews in the days leading up to his execution. But in a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, he recalled the trauma of his childhood — eating Alpo dog food for dinner, watching his mother shoot up heroin. She once made him fight a Doberman for money, he recalled. Then, there was the constant torrent of abuse from his mother's male friends.

Nicklasson suffered from bipolar disorder and lived on and off in boys' homes for his petty crimes and institutions for his mental illness.

By his 20s, Nicklasson was homeless and a drug addict. While in rehab in 1994, he crossed paths with Dennis Skillicorn, who had been recently released from prison following a second-degree murder conviction for killing a man during a robbery.

The two and a third man, Tim DeGraffenreid, decided in August 1994 to make the trip from Kansas City across I-70 to St. Louis to buy drugs. On the way back, their rundown 1983 Chevrolet Caprice started sputtering. It broke down near Kingdom City, about 100 miles west of St. Louis, and they took it to the shop.

They used the down time to burglarize a home, stealing money and guns. Though warned the car was unfixable, the men got back on the road.

The car soon broke down again. Drummond, a 47-year-old Excelsior Springs, Mo., man who was a technical support supervisor for AT&T, saw the three men and their stranded car. He decided to stop and help.

The men loaded their stolen goods in the trunk of Drummond's Dodge Intrepid. Then Nicklasson put a gun to his head and told him to drive west.

Along the way, there was some debate between Nicklasson and Skillicorn about what to do with Drummond. Ultimately, they ordered him off the highway and to a secluded area in Lafayette County in western Missouri.

In the 2009 interview, Nicklasson recalled how he left the other two behind and walked Drummond to a wooded area. He said he had intended to tie him up to buy time for the trio to get away.

He changed his mind, ordering Drummond to kneel and cross his legs. Then he shot him twice in the head.

"I'm laughing, pacing," Nicklasson said, recalling the moment. "I started losing it. I wouldn't want this out, but I felt a euphoria. I finally got back for all the beatings I took" as a child.

Nicklasson and Skillicorn stole Drummond's car and drove to Arizona. When the vehicle broke down in the desert, they approached the home of Joseph and Charlene Babcock. Nicklasson killed Joseph Babcock after the man drove them back to their vehicle. Charlene Babcock was killed at the couple's home.

Both Nicklasson and Skillicorn were sentenced to life in prison for the Arizona killings and also sentenced to death in Missouri for Drummond's death. Skillicorn was executed in 2009 even though Nicklasson took sole responsibility for killing Drummond.

DeGraffenreid pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and did not receive a death sentence.

Nicklasson's execution was originally scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. But an appeals court panel granted a stay of execution Monday, citing concerns about his counsel at trial and sentencing in 1996.

When the full appeals court refused to take up the case Tuesday, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It did not return its 5-4 decision to vacate the stay until 10:07 p.m. Wednesday, with Justices Ruth Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting. Gov. Jay Nixon refused to grant clemency.

Missouri previously used a three-drug method for executions but changed protocols after drugmakers stopped selling the lethal drugs to prisons and corrections departments. The pentobarbital used in Missouri executions comes from an undisclosed compounding pharmacy — the Missouri Department of Corrections declines to say who makes the drug, or where.

Nicklasson becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Missouri, and the 70th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1989. Only Texas (508), Virginia, (110), Oklahoma (106) and Florida (81) have executed more inmates since the death penalty was re-legalized on January 17, 1977.

Nicklasson becomes the 38th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1358th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: AP, Rick Halperin, December 12, 2013

USA: The Lethal Injection Debacle

Our European allies are imposing economic sanctions. Multinational pharmaceutical companies are threatening our supply of vital drugs. At the same time, medical practitioners have been drawn into an area that is foreign to them.

How did the U.S. get itself into this position? Blame the death penalty.

In an attempt to carry out long-scheduled executions, states have been embarrassing themselves in a frenetic scramble to secure execution drugs from wherever they can find them.

Increasingly, they are resorting to secrecy and backup execution protocols necessitated by drug shortages instead of treating those condemned to death with the dignity appropriate to any human life.

A short list of recent developments illustrates the debacle that encompasses today's practice of lethal injection:

--In an attempt to obtain execution drugs, many states turned to a tiny overseas distributor called "Dream Pharma," located in the back of a driving school in London. The drugs were seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and the United Kingdom quickly took measures to prevent further exports.

-Ohio has changed its execution protocol 5 times in recent years. Its latest proposal is to use a 2nd-tier backup procedure, involving a combination of drugs never before applied in an execution.

--Florida also instituted an un-tried combination of drugs, different from Ohio's. Florida begins with the injection of midazolam, identified as a sedative rather than an anesthetic. The next drug paralyzes the inmate so no pain can be observed; it then injects an extremely painful liquid salt, potassium chloride. If the midazolam does not anesthetize the inmate effectively, the execution will be excruciating - though no one but the inmate will notice.

--A few months ago, Texas announced its lethal injection drugs were reaching their expiration date. Shortly before its next scheduled execution, the state suddenly found a new source for the drug it had been using (pentobarbital): a compounding pharmacy in Houston, unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Once the source became public, the pharmacy demanded the return of the drugs, but Texas declined. Last year, contaminated drugs from a compounding pharmacy killed 60 people.

--Missouri also announced it would introduce a new drug into the lethal injection process - propofol. When the German manufacturer responsible for almost all of the propofol used in the U.S. heard of this plan, it protested, indicating the entire supply of propofol for vital surgeries in the U.S. could be jeopardized. Missouri returned the drug and is now resorting to a compounding pharmacy, declaring them part of the state's "execution team."

Using drugs to kill people is not new.

As hangings began to appear distasteful, New York considered using lethal injections as far back as 1890. It chose a newer technology instead - the electric chair - to carry out executions.

Starting in 1976, when the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume after a 4-year pause to allow states to draft more precise death penalty laws, states began investigating alternative approaches to carrying out the death penalty.

In Oklahoma a coroner suggested a 3-drug execution process, without stipulating who would oversee the procedure. Compared to the electric chair or the gas chamber, it seemed a more palatable means of taking human life.

Texas, in 1982, became the 1st state to carry out a lethal injection, using a 3-drug procedure.

Eventually, every death-penalty state and the federal government adopted lethal injection, and the U.S. Supreme Court gave its approval in 2008. Over 1,000 lethal-injection executions were carried out around the country before the present crisis emerged.

Although many lethal injections did not go as planned, the most embarrassing incident occurred in Ohio in 2009.

Romell Broom was strapped to the gurney and prodded with IV needles for nearly 2 hours before the governor called a halt to the failed proceedings. Ohio recognized that changes had to be made, and it became the 1st state in the country to use a single-drug (sodium thiopental) in executions.

The sole supplier of sodium thiopental to the U.S. was an Illinois-based company named Hospira, Inc.

In 2010 Hospira announced it objected to the use of its drug in executions and eventually ceased production altogether, citing objections to the death penalty by Italian workers who manufactured the drug.

Since all states were using thiopental, they were forced to change their execution process.

After sources from overseas were cut off by a federal court ruling that imported drugs must be controlled by the Food and Drug Administration, most states turned to a drug called pentobarbital, which was widely used for anesthetic purposes in the U.S.

Although the supply at first seemed sufficient, the main manufacturer of pentobarbital - Lundbeck, Inc. of Denmark - issued a strong statement condemning the use of this drug in executions and promising to restrict its sale to prisons.

With no new supply, the existing quantities of pentobarbital began to expire. Many states searched for either alternative sources or alternative drugs to carry out executions.

Compounding pharmacies, which can prepare a single dose of a drug in response to a prescription, and which are not as well known as the large pharmaceutical companies, became a natural choice for execution drugs.

South Dakota was the first to use this source in 2012. Other more prolific execution states such as Texas, Ohio, Georgia, and Missouri also announced they would use compounding pharmacies.

However, these pharmacies are part of the medical profession, and states' efforts to involve the medical community have often been met with resistance.

States adopted various strategies in response. Missouri's included a pharmacy in its "execution team." Ohio added "Medical Team" to its execution protocol. But the growing difficulties in obtaining drugs from compounding pharmacies may spell future trouble in persisting with this medical model of taking lives.

The use of new drugs and new, unregulated sources is under attack in the courts, with the international community and the medical profession watching closely. Every change to a state execution procedure is challenged in court by those about to be executed. On the international front, the European Commission has imposed export controls on various drugs used in executions. Within the medical community, organizations such as the American Society of Anesthesiologists have issued statements warning of drugs being removed from the market because of their use in executions.

Congress is already considering FDA control over compounding pharmacies, following the string of deaths that occurred in 2012 from contaminated drugs produced by these pharmacies.

But with the death penalty already declining in public support and use, the lethal injection crisis may be one more indicator that capital punishment no longer comports with our evolving standards of decency.

Source: Richard Dieter is Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, thecrimereport.org, November 12, 2013

Nebraska researches "Death Penalty" drug

Nebraska will be looking at a number of options to maintain the death penalty.

Nebraska has been blocked from carrying out executions, because it cannot get adequate supplies of sodium thiopental, the drug the state would use as an anesthetic. No longer produced domestically, the drug has become increasingly difficult to obtain from European manufacturers who have been blocked from selling it for use in executions.

Missouri has announced it will change its death penalty protocol after it became difficult to receive propofol, an anesthetic used in its 3-drug protocol. The state now will use the sedative pentobarbital and is considering a switch to a 1-drug protocol.

Attorney General Jon Bruning says Nebraska will be review the move by other states toward a 1-drug protocol to carry out lethal injection, rather than the 3-drug method now on the books.

"Certainly, that's under discussion. The governor and I have had conversations and will continue to have conversations. That's one of the options," Bruning says. "We both believe that the men on death row deserve the penalties that have been meted out by the courts and judges."

Some states, such as Texas and Ohio, have begun using compounding pharmacies to prepare the needed drugs, which would avoid difficulties in buying from manufacturers under pressure by death penalty opponents to not sell drugs for use in executions.

Oklahoma was the 1st state to use a 1-drug protocol, using pentobarbital for an execution.

Bruning says his office has been reviewing the changes made by other states.

"We have had reviews of what a number of states are doing. There's of course the 3-drug protocol we use. There's a 1-drug protocol. There are various options and I think if you were to see any sort of change in the protocol it would give Corrections a number of different options. We don't (want to) hamstring ourselves with 1 option," Bruning says.

Nebraska has some sodium thiopental on hand, but it expires in December. It has become increasingly difficult to get for use in executions.

The legislature could change the state execution protocol or changes could be made to the regulations used by the state Department of Correctional Services.

The state switched to lethal injection after a 2009 Nebraska Supreme Court ruling declared the electric chair to be cruel and unusual punishment. Nebraska last carried out an execution in 1997. 11 prisoners now reside on death row.

Source: Nebraska Radio Network, October 28, 2013

Arizona hands over execution drug info to court

Arizona Death Chamber

Arizona has handed over information on the execution drug it plans on using in 2 upcoming executions after a judge ordered the release.

The documents filed in federal court in Phoenix Saturday show the pentobarbital to be used at Wednesday's execution of Edward Schad and that of Robert Glen Jones Jr. on Oct. 23 expires in November. It comes from Denmark-based Lundbeck, Inc., which stopped selling it for executions in July 2011.

Lawyers for the inmates were worried the state may not have unexpired, FDA approved drugs. Arizona uses just 1 drug in its executions.

U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver ordered the release Friday. Federal public defender Dale Baich says he doesn't know why the state tried to hide the information.

Last-minute appeals are ongoing for both inmates.

Source: Daily Herald, October 7, 2013

Death row inmates sue Texas for sourcing execution drug from compounding pharmacy

Huntsville Unit, Texas

Death row inmates are suing the state of  Texas for obtaining a killing drug from a compounding pharmacy after its previous supply of pentobarbital expired last month. The lawsuit says the drug carries "a high risk of excruciating pain."

The state turned to a compounding pharmacy in suburban Houston to purchase eight vials of pentobarbital last month, a Freedom of Information request obtained by AP revealed.

The information came to light after Texas prison officials refused to explain how they procured more of the death row drug amid a national shortage.

States that carry out the #deathpenalty began experiencing a shortage of lethal drugs after some overseas companies refused to sell the drugs for the purpose of executions in 2011.

Texas, along with some other states, then turned to domestic compounding pharmacies like the one in Houston to refill their supply.

With the new supply, executions can go on as planned into the next year, AP cited Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark as saying.

One of the main problems with the switch is that compounding pharmacies are not subject to federal inspection and drugs from those facilities are reportedly at risk of being contaminated.

On Wednesday, three Texas-based death row prisoners filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s use of drugs originating from compounding pharmacies, arguing that they violate the US Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

This type of pharmacy is "not subject to stringent FDA regulations" and is "one of the leading sources for counterfeit drugs entering the US," the lawsuit reads, as quoted by AFP.

"There is a significant chance that [the pentobarbital] could be contaminated, creating a grave likelihood that the lethal injection process could be extremely painful, or harm or handicap plaintiffs without actually killing them," it adds.

Compounding pharmacies are only regulated by local state authorities and have been in the crossfires before for possible contamination risks. In November 2012, one such pharmacy was identified as being responsible for a deadly meningitis outbreak caused by poor hygiene.

Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the drug can cause "a high risk of excruciating pain."

"Use of compounded pentobarbital would constitute a significant change in the lethal injection protocol, a change that adds an unacceptable risk of pain, suffering and harm to the plaintiffs if and when they are executed," the lawsuit says.

"This uncertainty and the unnecessary suffering and mental anguish it creates for plaintiffs is an Eighth Amendment violation," it argues.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott responded on Wednesday saying that it still intends to execute plaintiff Michael Yowell by administering a dose of compounded pentobarbital. The state of Texas carries out more executions than any other state in the US.

Previous legal challenges against drugs from compounding pharmacies have failed.

Source: RT, October 4, 2013

Ohio’s lack of access to lethal drug could force change in executions

E.U. companies block states from purchases

COLUMBUS — Ohio is preparing to possibly overhaul its execution procedure for the third time in four years after its access to a lethal drug at the center of its injection process has been blocked again by its manufacturer.

Barring some way the state can acquire more doses of the powerful sedative pentobarbital, as Texas apparently did at the last minute last week, Ohio will tell a federal court by Friday how it plans to carry out lethal injections.

“There will be controversies with each drug,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The center does not take a position on capital punishment or the methods used to carry it out.

“Some of these are international companies that want to distance themselves from anything that will result in death,” he said. “They want to make drugs that keep people alive. Even a compounding pharmacy [on-demand drug maker] wants to make clean, pure, reliable drugs that will help you. Although they are not quite as subject to public shaming, they are not in the business of killing people.”

Last week, Ohio was believed to have used the last of its supply of pentobarbital to execute Harry Mitts, Jr., who killed two people, including a Cleveland area police officer, 19 years ago.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Toledo Blade, September 30, 2013

Tennessee Switching to 'Single Drug' Execution Protocol

The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) announced Friday that it will switch to a new procedure for court ordered executions.

TDOC will now use what is known as a single drug protocol, replacing the previously used three-drug method. The protocol permits sole use of the sedative pentobarbital.

Numerous states across the country have changed to the single drug method in light of a widespread shortage of thiopental sodium, one of the three drugs used in the three drug protocal. The sole U.S. maker of thiopental sodium decided to halt production in 2011 amid a campaign by death-penalty opponents. Makers of other drugs used in executions have come under similar pressure.

Georgia made the change in 2012. Pentobarbital is most commonly used to euthanize animals

The drug was used just this week to execute a Texas man, the 13th execution carried out in Texas this year.

The last execution carried out in Tennessee was Cecil Johnson on Dec. 2, 2009. There are currently 79 inmates held on Death Row in Tennessee.

Source: News Channel 9, September 27, 2013

Texas resolves lethal injection shortfall

Texas, the US state that puts to death the most inmates, has resolved a shortfall of a lethal execution drug, according to authorities Friday.

Last month, an official told AFP that the state's stock of pentobarbital had nearly run out and would only last through September.

Pentobarbital was used in an execution late Thursday "and it was not expired," Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark told AFP.

It was unclear whether that dose was part of an old or new supply of the anesthetic used to euthanize animals.

Clark declined to provide any specifics but suggested the problem of replenishing the state's stock of the killer drug had been resolved.

"We have not changed our execution protocol in which pentobarbital is used and have no immediate plans to do so," Clark said.

"We will continue to use pentobarbital in the future."

In August, authorities said the state would have to find an alternative -- either another provider for the pentobarbital, or other options that would involve other drugs.

US states that use capital punishment faced a supply problem in 2011 when the United States stopped producing the drug used since the introduction of lethal injections in the 1980s.

Since then, certain states -- including Texas, which has executed more than 500 inmates in three decades -- turned to pentobarbital.

But the Danish producer of the drug refused to provide it to the United States for the purpose of executing humans.

Some US states, such as Ohio, plan to change methods or suspend executions while the matter is resolved.

Arturo Diaz, 37, was declared dead at 2330 GMT Thursday -- 17 minutes after receiving the pentobarbital injection, according to prison authorities.

He had been sentenced to death for the April 1999 knifing murder near the Mexican border of a man who owed him $100.

His was the 27th execution in the United States this year. Thirteen of these took place in Texas.

Source: Agence France-Presse, September 28, 2013

USA: Death Row Improvises, Lacking Lethal Mix

The decision by the Missouri Supreme Court to allow propofol, the same powerful anesthetic that caused the death of Michael Jackson, to be used in executions — coming at a time when Texas, Ohio, Arkansas and other states are scrambling to come up with a new drug for their own lethal injections — is raising new questions about how the death penalty will be carried out.

“The bottom line is no matter what drugs they come up with, despite every avenue these states have pursued, every drug they have investigated has met a dead end,” said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who studies execution methods and the death penalty. “This affects every single execution in the country. It just stalls everything, stalls the process.”

With manufacturers now refusing to supply corrections departments with the drugs they had been using for executions, some states, like Georgia, have been resorting to obtaining drugs from unregulated compounding pharmacies — specialty drugmakers — which death penalty opponents say lack the proper quality control. Other states, as they run low on their old stock of drugs and are unable to replace them, are turning to new, untried methods like propofol or simply announcing that they are searching for a solution.

In the beginning, it was relatively simple and uniform. Several dozen states adopted the three-drug cocktail for executions first used by Texas three decades ago — a sedative (usually sodium thiopental) was mixed with a paralytic agent (pancuronium bromide) followed by a drug inducing cardiac arrest (potassium chloride). The idea was to provide a quick, painless method to replace the electric chair, gas chamber and firing squad.

But a shortage of pancuronium bromide a few years ago led some states to switch to a single-drug method, often simply administering enough sodium thiopental to cause death.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The New York Times, August 18, 2013

U.S.: The Reasons Behind the Slow Pace of Executions

Opponents of the death penalty have hit upon an effective tactic: Learn who is making the lethal drugs used in executions and publicly shame them. Now, death penalty states are fighting to make the names of the drugs a state secret.

States that impose the death penalty have been facing a crisis in recent years: They are short on the drugs used in executions.

In California, which has the country's largest death row population, the chief justice of the state supreme court has said there are unlikely to be any executions for 3 years, in part due to the shortage of appropriate lethal drugs. As a result, state prosecutors are calling for a return of the gas chamber.

Ohio, which is 2nd only to Texas in the number of executions carried out since 2010, said it will run out of the drug it uses in executions, pentobarbital, on September 30. The state has 2 men scheduled for execution in November, and 8 more set to be killed after that. Every state's supply of pentobarbital, which has been the principal execution drug, expires at the end of November.

The shortage has forced death penalty states to scramble on two fronts: They are hunting for new suppliers or different drugs to use, and enacting changes to public records laws to keep the names of suppliers and manufacturers of those alternative drugs secret.

The lack of lethal drugs, and the fight over keeping new ones secret, are partly the result of a remarkably effective campaign by opponents of the death penalty, who have, in effect, taken their efforts from the court room to the boardroom.

Each time a state has found a new source for a drug to use in executions, Reprieve, an anti-death penalty organization based in London, in collaboration with death penalty lawyers in the United States, has used freedom of information laws, the local news media, and the powers of persuasion to compel the drug's manufacturer to cut off the supply.

"Who's easier to persuade? The Supreme Court or a corporation that has financial interests?" said Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American, who was a death penalty lawyer in the South for many years before founding Reprieve. "You can make it not worth their while to allow their drugs in executions."

The effectiveness of Reprieve's campaign might well be behind the action taken last year by the state of Texas, which leads the nation in executions.

When a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, Mike Ward, using the state's Public Information Act, sought information about the drugs used in executions, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice fiercely resisted.

Some death penalty states, looking to solve their drug supply problems in a more reliable way, switched drugs - opting for pentobarbital, an anesthetic commonly used in putting animals to sleep. In one legal filing, Patricia Fleming, the agency's assistant general counsel, said revealing the information about the drugs and who made them would invite "financial intimidation and negative publicity," as well as "intensive lobbying" and "unrestrained harassment." Referring to death penalty opponents, Fleming asserted that "essential to their strategy is knowledge of the private companies" that supply the drugs used in lethal injections.

The state attorney general ruled against her, and the department disclosed that it had enough pentobarbital at the time for 23 executions, Ward reported.

Death penalty states are now taking measures to keep anti-death penalty activists, and journalists, from learning the identity of suppliers. A Georgia law enacted in March provides that any information about a "person or entity that manufactures, supplies, compounds, or prescribes the drugs, medical supplies or medical equipment" used in an execution shall be considered a "confidential state secret." Already this year, at least 3 other states - Arkansas, South Dakota, and Tennessee - have amended their public records laws to exempt the names of suppliers from disclosure.

Lethal injection was first proposed as a method of execution in the 19th century by a New York doctor who argued it would be cheaper than hanging. It took 100 years or so for it to be used, but every state that set out to execute people eventually adopted it as the chosen method.

Generally, states have used a 3-drug protocol. The 1st was an anesthetic, sodium thiopental, intended to render the prisoner unconscious so that he or she does not experience the pain and suffering from the drugs to come. The 2nd drug, pancuronium bromide, paralyzes the diaphragm and lungs, making it impossible for the condemned to breathe. Finally, potassium chloride is injected, causing death by cardiac arrest.

In 2008, the Supreme Court, in Baze v. Rees, held that lethal injection did not run afoul of the Eighth Amendment proscription on "cruel and unusual punishment."

But the Court recognized care had to be taken in the killing, so that it wasn't unconstitutionally "cruel." The most critical drug, it emphasized, is the anesthetic.

"It is uncontested that, failing a proper dose of sodium thiopental that would render the prisoner unconscious, there is substantial, unconstitutionally unacceptable risk of suffocation from the administration of pancuronium bromide and pain from the injection of potassium chloride," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

The problems for death penalty states, and the opening for opponents of the death penalty arose when the only company that had governmental approval to make the anesthetic, Hospira, announced in 2011 that it was suspending production because of manufacturing problems at its plant in North Carolina.

Arizona, with 2 executions pending in late 2011, managed to find another source of sodium thiopental; but it didn't want the public to know what it was or where it came from.

When lawyers for Jeffrey Landrigan, one of the men facing death, sought the name of the supplier, Arizona's state attorney general refused to say. Ultimately, on the eve of Landrigan's execution, the attorney general disclosed that the drug had come from Britain. He did so, he said, to allay fears that the drugs had been made in a Third World country and might be contaminated and unsafe.

Tennessee also acknowledged that one of its execution drugs had been made in Britain but refused to divulge the company's name.

At Reprieve, Maya Foa, head of the lethal investigation project, searched through medical and pharmaceutical directories to identify British companies that made sodium thiopental.

Dream Pharma Office Entrance

The British company selling sodium thiopental to Arizona, Tennessee, and other states turned out to be a tiny wholesaler that operated out of the back of a driving school in a working class neighborhood in West London.

It was called Dream Pharma, and it was basically a 1-man operation. It also suddenly became more profitable, as states in America moved to improvise. Stafford Smith, Reprieve's director, wrote a letter to Dream Pharma.

"You have played a significant role and hold responsibility for the potential deaths of many people in the United States," he wrote.

Reprieve sent the letter, along with Dream Pharma's address and phone number, to journalists, and articles appeared in British newspapers and on the BBC. Dream Pharma shut down. The company has declined to comment on its battles with Reprieve or the sale of drugs to the U.S. for executions.

Reprieve then successfully lobbied the British government to ban exports of any drugs to the U.S. for executions. Capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain in the early 1960s even though polls showed the public supported it.

With Hospira out of the business, states had become fairly desperate. That urgency was captured in government emails and documents obtained by death penalty defense lawyers.

"I have been given a task to obtain some Sodium Pentothal by any means available," the director of the pharmacy in the Nebraska department of corrections wrote to her counterparts in several states. "Does anyone know where I might start looking?"

Kayem Pharma in Mumbai, India

She eventually found a small wholesaler in Mumbai, India, which operated out of 2 rooms on the ground floor of an apartment building; it had no air conditioning, raising doubts about the safety and efficacy of any drugs stored there.

Reprieve again went to work, alerting local reporters and holding a news conference in Mumbai. Officials from India's food and drug administration raided the offices. The company was quickly out of business.

In California, prison officials turned to hospitals throughout the state in search of sodium thiopental, without success. The warden at San Quentin explored buying some in Pakistan.

In the end, Arizona officials solved California's problems, supplying 12 grams of sodium thiopental from its limited supply, a happy exchange according to government emails unearthed by death penalty opponents.

"You guys in AZ are life savers," a California corrections officer wrote to his Arizona counterpart. "Buy you a beer next time I get that way."

Some death penalty states, looking to solve their drug supply problems in a more reliable way, switched drugs - opting for pentobarbital, an anesthetic commonly used in putting animals to sleep. The 1st state to use it for an execution was Oklahoma, in December 2010, and it quickly became 1 of the execution drugs of choice.

This time, however, Reprieve was not up against a small entity. Only one company had government approval to sell pentobarbital in the U.S., and it was a major international pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck Inc. Headquartered in Denmark, it had some 6,000 employees worldwide; its American plant was in Kansas.

When Reprieve approached Lundbeck, in early 2011, the company said it was "adamantly opposed" to its drugs being used in executions - its primary use is in the treatment of epilepsy - but it said it had no control over what happened after its products were sold to wholesalers or distributors.

Reprieve ratcheted up the pressure. Every time Lundbeck's pentobarbital was used in an execution, it issued a press release.

Anti-death penalty activists campaigned against Lundbeck on Twitter and Facebook, shareholders raised questions at the company's annual meeting, a pension fund sold its shares, and the company's place on an annual ranking of Denmark's best companies fell from 17 to 40.

Lundbeck then did what it had said it couldn't do: It devised a distribution system that would keep its pentobarbital from the states that conducted executions.

In April, Hospira announced that it was putting controls in place so that 3 of its drugs - pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, and propofol - would not be used in executions.

Once again, that has left states trying to figure out what to do. In Colorado, a man who killed three teenagers and their boss in a pizza restaurant in 1993 is set to be executed in August. But the state does not have the proper drugs, causing the director of prisons to send an urgent plea to the state's compounding pharmacies. At "compounding pharmacies," pharmacists mix, or compound, the ingredients for drugs on site.

Last October, South Dakota became the 1st state to use a compound drug in an execution, and it did so twice.

Lawyers for one of the men to be executed, Robert Moeller, who had kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old girl, filed a lawsuit to obtain information about the supplying pharmacy. The state resisted, and a federal judge sided with the state.

South Dakota was among the states to recently pass a law exempting the names of suppliers of lethal injection drugs from its public records law. The change was necessary, said South Dakota State Senator Jean Hunhoff, "because there's been harassment that has occurred against non-protected manufacturers and pharmacists, thereby causing difficulty for the state in obtaining the necessary chemicals for the lethal injection."

South Dakota's law passed in the state senate without opposition, and the house by a lopsided 60-8.

Source: Pacific Standard Magazine, July 19, 2013

California death penalty: State abandons defense of three-drug executions

California Death Chamber

California has abandoned the legal defense of its delay-ridden lethal injection procedures, moving ahead to adopt a single-drug option that has been embraced by other states trying to enforce their death penalty laws.

The Brown administration has decided against appealing a May ruling that invalidated the state's three-drug execution method, which has been mired in years of state and federal court legal tangles.

Faced with a Wednesday deadline, the state chose not to seek a California Supreme Court review of the decision striking down the three-drug procedure because state officials failed to follow administrative rules when adopting them several years ago.

A prison system spokeswoman said the governor and other state officials will proceed with working out a method of executing condemned inmates with a single fatal dose of a sedative, which other states -- such as Ohio, Arizona and Washington -- have adopted to short-circuit legal challenges to their lethal injection procedures.

Source: Mercury News, July 10, 2013

Lethal Madness in Missouri

The state of Missouri prefers to kill two men rather than throw away two doses of Propofol about to expire, WOW!

Let’s talk about priorities and motivations here. The attorney general for the state of Missouri is asking the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for two men on death row, Allen Nicklasson and Joseph Franklin.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the reason is the limited supply of Propofol as much of its stock will expire next spring. This is worthy of a very bad movie, but this is the outrageous reality of the criminal justice system in the United-States in the 21st century. Evolving standard of decency? Go figure…

Just for your information, the state of Missouri switched its killing cocktail from 3 drugs to a single dose of Propofol in July 2012 but the courts decided against setting execution dates because the new protocol violates the 8th amendment of the Constitution that forbids cruel and unusual punishment.

The state of Missouri acquired doses of Propofol legally through an authorized vendor while its manufacturer, Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries in the UK, did not realize by whom and for what purpose its drug was being purchased in the US.

Unlike other killing labs, Lundbeck not to name the top winner, it rapidly decided to implement a controlled distribution system to ensure the drug be only accessible to hospitals and not departments of corrections in the USA.

With this latest brilliant idea to kill two men to avoid wasting two doses of Propofol, let’s show the attorney general in Missouri, Chris Koster, a big round of applause for his criminal work in the name of the people and remind him what the word “JUSTICE” stands for.

The death maniacs must be stopped, and this latest episode of pathetical political propaganda should alert you all as to what these people are capable of in YOUR name!

Thank you for protesting this loudly, the death mongers must be stopped now!

Please act and share this post NOW!

Source: PentobarbitalX, July 2, 2013

Missouri seeks execution dates for 2 before death drug expires

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. • Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster wants the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for two inmates before the state's supply of an execution drug expires.

Koster has renewed a request for execution dates to be set for Allen Nicklasson and Joseph Franklin. The state's highest court refused to do so last August, citing a legal challenge to the state's newly planned use of the drug propofol as its execution method.

The attorney general's office said Monday that the Department of Corrections has a limited supply of propofol and much of it will expire next spring.

Nicklasson was convicted for the 1994 killing of a businessman traveling on Interstate 70 in Callaway County.

Franklin was convicted of killing a man outside a synagogue in Richmond Heights in 1977. He admitted killing Gerald Gordon, who was a 42-year-old father of three young daughters. 

Source: Associated Press, July 2, 2013

Missouri AG says state may have to use gas chamber

Oregon Gas Chamber

ST. LOUIS—With drugs needed for lethal injection in short supply and courts wrangling over how to execute prisoners without them, Missouri's attorney general is floating one possible solution: Bring back the gas chamber.

In court filings and interviews this week, Attorney General Chris Koster noted that Missouri statutes allow two options for executions: lethal injection and death by gas. Koster's comments come amid his growing frustration over the Missouri Supreme Court's refusal to set execution dates until lethal injection issues are resolved.

"The Missouri death penalty statute has been, in my opinion, unnecessarily entangled in the courts for over a decade," Koster said Wednesday in an email exchange with The Associated Press.

Asked about concerns by some who say using lethal gas could violate condemned inmates' constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment, Koster responded: "The premeditated murder of an innocent Missourian is cruel and unusual punishment. The lawful implementation of the death penalty, following a fair and reasoned jury trial, is not."

Missouri used gas to execute 38 men and one woman from 1938 to 1965. After a 24-year hiatus, the death penalty resumed in 1989. Since then, 68 men—all convicted murderers—have been executed in the state, all by lethal injection. But as concerns were raised in the courts about the lethal injection process, Missouri has carried out just two executions since 2005.

A return to lethal gas would create an expense because Missouri no longer has a gas chamber. Previous executions by gas took place at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Prisoners were moved out of that prison a decade ago and it is now a tourist attraction—complete with tours of what used to be the gas chamber.

Like other states with the death penalty, Missouri for years used a three-drug mixture to execute inmates. But those drugs are no longer being made available for executions, leaving states to scramble for solutions.

Last year, Missouri announced plans to use propofol, the anesthetic blamed for pop star Michael Jackson's 2009 death—even though the drug hasn't been used to execute prisoners in the U.S. and its potential for lethal injection is under scrutiny by the courts.

A 2012 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City on behalf of 21 Missouri death row inmates claimed the use of propofol would be cruel and unusual punishment.

In an interview last week, Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Russell said the court is "waiting for resolution" from the U.S. District Court.

Koster on Monday asked the Missouri Supreme Court to set execution dates for two long-serving inmates, arguing that time is running short to use a limited, nearly expired supply of propofol.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said a few other proposals have been made for states to use the gas chamber or the electric chair, but they've gone nowhere.

"It's unlikely that states would go back to these older methods, and if they did I'm not sure they would be upheld" in the courts, he said.

Rita Linhardt, chairwoman of the board for Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, questioned the practicality of the gas chamber.

"The gas chamber has been dismantled in Missouri, so from a practical point of view I don't know how that could be done," Linhardt said. "I would think that would be a considerable cost and expense for the state to rebuild the machinery of death."

Source: AP, July 3, 2013

Louisiana releases execution protocol; inmate's lawyer calls it 'inadequate'

Louisiana Death Chamber

Louisiana corrections officials have released the state's execution protocol after a lawsuit brought by two death row inmates called for more transparency into the procedure. But the inmates' lawyers say details released by the state are spotty at best, and that the use of a new lethal drug is not fully explained.

Until this month, the state's execution protocol was inaccessible by the public, including inmates and their attorneys. The protocol, obtained by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune on Friday, was released after 2 death row inmates filed suit against the state Corrections Department and Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola, to make public the documents.

But, Michael Rubenstein, lawyer for inmate Jessie Hoffman, said the nearly 60-page document he received last week is "woefully inadequate." While it confirms previous court admissions that the state plans to switch to using a single drug in its lethal injections, it leaves out important details, he said.

"The lethal injection protocol released by the Louisiana Department of Corrections this week fails to provide the most basic information about how it intends to carry out executions," Rubenstein said Friday.

He pointed to gaps in how lethal drugs will be stored, overseen and administered, and who will have ultimate responsibility over the drugs. He also expressed concerns about the state's decision to switch from a 3-drug cocktail to just 1 drug.

"We still do not know whether any medical authorities were consulted regarding the incorporation of (pentobarbital); the original source or expiration date of the new drug; how the drug is to be administered; or the training of personnel who will implement the new procedure for the 1st time," Rubenstein said.

Pentobarbital is a drug primarily used to treat seizures and insomnia. In large doses -- such as the 5 grams administered during execution -- the drug is lethal. Formerly, it was used primarily in euthanizing animals.

When pentobarbital first began being used in cases of capital punishment, in Oklahoma in 2010, inmate advocacy groups expressed concerns with it being largely untested in large doses. Ohio was the 1st state to use it alone in March 2011, triggering an outcry from advocates.

Louisiana has not yet used the single-drug formula. The last inmate to be executed in the state was in 2010, when the 3-drug cocktail was still in use. The state decided to make the switch after supplies of sodium thiopental -- the starter drug in the cocktail -- began to run out.

While Hoffman's execution is not yet scheduled, the other plaintiff in the case, Christopher Sepulvado, was scheduled to be executed on Ash Wednesday this year. But after he joined Hoffman's suit, the court ordered the state to delay his execution until the protocol was released.

It is unclear whether the state will proceed with Sepulvado's execution now that the protocol has been released. Part of the attorneys' argument was based on concerns about the use of pentobarbital, its 3-year expiration date, and who would be monitoring its storage -- 3 pieces of information not fully elucidated in the execution protocol.

Pam LaBorde, public information officer for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, would not comment on the case Friday, citing "pending death penalty-related issues before the courts."

In response, Rubenstein said he and his colleagues will "engage in a robust discovery process to uncover the truth" that begins with additional interrogations and documents requests.

Hoffman was sentenced to death for the 1996 kidnapping, rape and killing of Mary "Molly" Elliott, an advertising executive in St. Tammany Parish. Sepulvado was convicted of the beating and fatal scalding of his 6-year-old stepson in Mansfield in 1992.

Source: The New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 29, 2013

Arkansas governor to hold off on scheduling executions

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe said Tuesday he doesn't have any immediate plans to schedule executions for seven death row inmates, even though the attorney general has asked him to do so.

The governor's decision to hold off on setting execution dates comes as the Department of Correction plans to rewrite its lethal injection protocol and as nine death row inmates challenge the state's new execution law in court, governor's spokesman Matt DeCample said.

"We have to be in a place where we're confident to proceed, and when you now have an active court challenge over the statute and the uncertainty around the protocol, we're not in that position right now," DeCample said.

The Associated Press first reported Monday that the Department of Correction planned to rewrite its lethal injection procedure to include a different drug. That news came after the state last month said it lost its account with a pharmaceutical company that previously supplied it with chemicals.

It's not clear when the revised protocol will be complete, but the expected shift in procedure follows changes in the past year at the state Capitol and the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The high court struck down the state's lethal injection law in June 2012, saying legislators had ceded too much control over execution procedures to correction officials. So this year, lawmakers enacted a new law that said the state must use a lethal dose of a barbiturate in lethal injections. However, the new law leaves it up to the Department of Correction to pick the drug.

The AP first reported in April that Arkansas planned to use an anti-seizure drug called phenobarbital in executions, even though that chemical has never been used in a lethal injection in the United States.

Several death row inmates sued, challenging the state's new lethal injection law, along with the procedure that spelled out plans to use phenobarbital and an anti-anxiety drug called lorazepam.

Source: AP, June 18, 2013

California's death penalty on hold again

San Quentin's brand new
execution chamber and gurney

Ensuring California's death penalty system remains in limbo for the foreseeable future, a state appeals court on Thursday scrapped the state's latest attempt to update its lethal injection procedures.

In a 28-page ruling, the 1st District Court of Appeal invalidated California's lethal injection procedures, finding that state prison officials failed to comply with proper administrative rules when crafting new regulations more than two years ago. The decision sends California back to the drawing board, unless the Brown administration appeals the decision to the California Supreme Court.

The appeals court upheld a Marin County judge, who likewise found the prison department failed to comply with the state's administrative procedures act for a variety of reasons, including providing no public explanation for why San Quentin officials opted to continue with a three-drug lethal injection method as opposed to a single drug execution option being embraced by a number of other states.

The appeals court decision is the latest setback for death penalty supporters in California, where there has been a moratorium on executions since 2006 as a result of legal challenges to the state's lethal injection procedures in both the state and federal courts. There are now more than 725 inmates awaiting execution on death row, including more than a dozen who have exhausted their legal appeals and would be eligible to be executed immediately if the state resumed executions.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Mercury News, May 30, 2013

Have Louisiana’s lethal injection drugs expired? Records unavailable

Death row inmate Christopher Sepulvado, a convicted child killer, wants more information about how the state intends to execute him.

So does The Lens.

The Lens started investigating Louisiana’s capital punishment plans after the state said earlier this year it was abandoning a three-drug cocktail used previously in lethal injections and turning to a one-drug protocol for Sepulvado’s execution.

The state’s responses to inquiries by The Lens and by Sepulvado’s attorneys invite varying interpretations. It is possible to conclude, for example, that the Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections has no drugs on hand for use in executions or that it has the drug it wants to use — pentobarbital — but no record establishing its expiration date.

Defense attorneys were told the records regarding the state’s current inventory of execution supplies are not available to the public or that their release would endanger public safety. The Lens was told records relating to the current inventory of the drug did not exist.

Efforts to get the state to clarify its responses have been unavailing.

A question of efficacy

In February, as Sepulvado appealed his pending execution, a federal judge called a hearing because of concerns raised by defense attorneys over lethal injection protocol. The state acknowledged its intention to use pentobarbtal, but did not disclose the expiration date on the state’s supply.

In fulfillment of their duty to explore every possible grounds for stalling or aborting an execution, defense attorneys argued that if Louisiana’s supply has outlasted its relatively brief shelf life, its use may make an execution painful or prolonged, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s ban on punishments that are “cruel and unusual.” Additionally, they said lack of notice violates due process.

“It is imperative that the Louisiana DOC [Department of Corrections] be forthright … about where it got the pentobarbital it plans to use and whether it is an FDA-approved product,” said Michael Rubenstein, a lawyer who filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of both Sepulvado and another death row inmate.

“Louisiana should not be permitted to move forward with any execution until it provides complete information. If we are going to have the death penalty, then we need to know all the facts before an execution is carried out,” Rubenstein said.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Lens, April 30, 2013

Arkansas turns to different lethal injection drug

After surrendering its supply of a lethal injection drug to federal agents in 2011, Arkansas turned to a somewhat surprising place to look for another drug: a list from lawyers for several death row inmates.

The state Department of Correction told The Associated Press last week that it decided to use phenobarbital after attorneys for several death row inmates mentioned in a lawsuit that it might be an available drug. Phenobarbital, which is used to treat seizures, has never been used in a U.S. execution, and critics contend that a drug that's untested in lethal injections could lead to inhumane deaths for condemned prisoners.

"People should not be using inmates as an experiment," said David Lubarsky, who chairs the anesthesiology department at the University of Miami's medical school. "And that is basically what this is. It's basically experimenting."

As drugmakers object to their products' use in lethal injections, more death penalty states have been looking at different options. But the states have revealed little, if any, information about how they go about picking drugs.

"It's been: Here's what we're going to do and unless you can prove it's excruciatingly painful, the courts, they're not experts either, they're going to allow it go forward," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.

Just last year, Missouri announced plans to use propofol, the anesthetic blamed for pop star Michael Jackson's death, even though that drug hadn't been used in a lethal injection. In explaining the change, the state merely said the decision was due to a lack of another drug. Department of Corrections spokeswoman Mandi Steele declined to comment further Friday, saying the state's execution protocol is the subject of legal action.

The changes came after states' supplies of sodium thiopental dried up when the makers put it off-limits for use in executions. Oklahoma was the first to try pentobarbital, a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals, leading some other states to follow suit. But now those supplies are running out after manufacturers banned its use by states for executions.

In Arkansas, Department of Correction spokeswoman Shea Wilson said the agency consulted medical sources before picking phenobarbital, but Wilson refused to say what those sources were. She also wouldn't say whether the agency considered using other drugs.

"Our research indicated the drug would take effect within 5 minutes and should result in a painless death," Wilson said in an email to the AP.

But even the paperwork that came with the state's supply of phenobarbital, which is a kind of drug known as a barbiturate, warns that the "toxic dose of barbiturates varies considerably," according to records the AP obtained.

"We have no idea about whether or not the injection of such large doses will produce some acute tolerance effect, in which case you may or may not actually be able to kill someone with it," said Lubarsky, who has testified in death penalty cases.

However, Mike Ritze, a family physician and Republican state lawmaker in Oklahoma, said phenobarbital is humane.

"I don't want to compare humans with veterinarians, but for years, they euthanized animals and you can use anything in the barbiturates and they're all very humane. Basically, the person just closes their eyes," said Ritze, a proponent of the death penalty who said he has used phenobarbital to treat patients with seizures.

Arkansas and many of the nation's more than 30 other death penalty states once used a virtually identical 3-drug process: The barbiturate sodium thiopental was administered to put the inmate to sleep, and 2 other drugs were administered to stop breathing and the heart.

As sodium thiopental supplies dried up, Arkansas and several other states initially turned their attention overseas, obtaining the drug from a British supplier. But in 2011, they lost their supplies to federal agents amid legal questions about how they got the drug.

No one responded to phone messages left Friday at West-Ward Pharmaceuticals, the company from which Arkansas bought its latest batch of drugs.

Lubarsky, the anesthesiology department chair, said that "just because the drug sounds alike - thiopental, pentobarbital, phenobarbital - that doesn't mean they're that close a cousin."

Those 3 drugs vary in the amount of time it takes for them to start kicking in. Sodium thiopental is like a light switch: It starts working quickly, and it wears off quickly. Phenobarbital, the drug Arkansas plans to use, takes a bit longer to kick in, and it takes longer for the drug to wear off.

Some say that means executions using phenobarbital could take more time.

Federal public defender Jenniffer Horan wrote to Arkansas Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe this week, calling on the governor to review the state's planned use of phenobarbital, saying it carries a "substantial risk of a lingering and inhumane death." A spokesman for Beebe said the governor's office is reviewing the letter in conjunction with the attorney general's office.

Arkansas hasn't executed an inmate since 2005 and it doesn't have any executions scheduled, though 37 inmates are on death row. Should executions be set, the state plans to inject inmates with the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam before giving them a large dose of phenobarbital.

"The lorazepam is a pre-execution sedative, but it also is intended to offset the side effects of the barbiturate should any develop," Wilson said in an email.

However, Jon Groner, a surgery professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, says that might not work because lorazepam can make some people excitable, instead of relaxed. Groner has worked with lawyers who represent death row inmates and has written about how lethal injections create an ethical conflict he calls the Hippocratic paradox.

Medical professionals are arguably the most knowledgeable when it comes to the drugs used in lethal injections, but they're supposed to heal people, not harm them.

"These states are not experts in pharmacology," Dieter said. "They're just trying to carry out their law."

Source: Associated Press, April 22, 2013