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Oklahoma Prepares for Substitute Drug Execution

By Steve Hall

"Okla. Set to Execute Inmate With Substitute Drug," is the titel of Sean Murphy's AP report, via ABC News. A man on Oklahoma's death row for the 2001 slaying of his cellmate is believed to be the first U.S. inmate set to be executed using a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals. John David Duty is set to die at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. A federal appeals court earlier this week upheld a judge's ruling that allows the state to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental, an anesthetic normally used in the state's lethal injection formula. A nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental led Oklahoma to alter its three-drug cocktail. Attorneys for Duty, 58, and two other death-row inmates challenged the state's decision to use pentobarbital, arguing during a November federal court hearing that it had not been done before in executions and could be inhumane...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on December 16, 2010 (boomark / email).