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States asking feds for help in acquiring execution drugs

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this CNN piece, which is headlined "13 states ask for federal help on execution drug shortage," states are now looking to the feds for help with their lethal injection woes. Here are some details: The U.S. Justice Department is reviewing a request from 13 states on how to acquire an execution drug no longer made in the United States and whether the federal government would share its supplies, a federal spokeswoman said Wednesday.... The U.S. shortage of sodium thiopental, also used as an anesthetic for brief surgical procedures, may force states to postpone executions and has forced them to look outside the country for a supply or come up with alternatives.  Those substitutes haven't been without controversy.  In December, Oklahoma used an anesthetic commonly used to euthanize animals to execute John David Duty for killing a cellmate...continue to full post

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