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Ohio completes first one-drug lethal injection with new execution drug

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this AP article, "Ohio executed an inmate Thursday with only one drug, previously used primarily to euthanize animals, marking the first time anyone in the United States had been put to death in that manner."  Here are more of the details: Johnnie Baston, 37, was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, after receiving an infusion of the drug pentobarbital.  His attorney and two brothers witnessed the execution, along with five reporters.  Baston was sentenced to death for the 1994 killing of Chong Mah, 53, a Toledo store owner. The execution comes after capital punishment in the United States was thrown in disarray in January when the only U.S. company that makes a sodium thiopental, which Ohio and most other states had long used in lethal injection, announced that it would no longer produce the drug...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 10, 2011 (boomark / email).