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"Anesthesia shortage may delay executions"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this new USA Today piece.  Here are excerpts: A nationwide shortage of several anesthesia drugs has left several states scrambling to find enough doses to carry out lethal injections ? potentially delaying executions well into next year. Kentucky announced this week that it would not be able to carry out two executions, despite pending death warrants, because the state has only enough sodium thiopental, also known as Pentothal, to perform a single lethal injection. "We have reached out to some other states, but that has not been fruitful," said J. Michael Brown, secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet. "We've had other states call us trying to find it." Oklahoma has also been forced to delay an execution after a federal judge said a hearing needs to be held before the state could substitute a drug for the state's remaining dose of sodium thiopental...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 28, 2010 (boomark / email).