ABC News reports, "Texas Only Has Enough Lethal Injection Drugs to Execute 2 of 317 Death Row Inmates," It's by Russell Goldman.
Texas has 317 convicted murderers on death row, but because of a company's decision last week to stop making the key drug for lethal injections, Texas only has enough of the potion to execute two.
Consequently, Texas and 32 other states will be watching closely as Ohio prepares to execute Johnnie Baston. They will be watching not only to see how well the substitute drug works, but how entangling the legal battle is going to be.
And:
Texas, which has the busiest death row in the country, expects to run out of its supply of lethal drugs in March.
"The supply expires in March, so we'll have to look to some sort of alternative," said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Jason Clarke. "We'll likely end up changing the drug. We'll look to what other states use successfully."
From Mississippi, today's Jackson Clarion Ledger carries the AP report, "State short on death drug Production, stopped in 2009, not resuming," by Holbrook Mohr.
Just weeks before Mississippi had back-to-back executions for the first time in nearly 50 years, officials were scrambling to find enough sodium thiopental to carry out the sentences.
The executions were carried out as scheduled, but the difficulty in finding sodium thiopental shows Mississippi is not immune from a nationwide shortage of the drug.
State Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said Wednesday the state is looking for a replacement for sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used in Mississippi's executions.
"We don't have a choice. We're wearing out our options," Epps said.
And:
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood wrote a letter to Hospira last April, asking if there was anything he could do to help expedite a shipment of sodium thiopental because the state didn't have enough for two executions, scheduled the following month, on May 19 and 20.
In a reply dated May 18, Brian J. Smith, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary for Hospira, told Hood he couldn't help because Hospira does "not support the use of any of our products in capital punishment procedures" and that manufacturing had halted in mid-2009 due to "manufacturing difficulties."
Smith wrote that Hospira was aware its products were being obtained from third parties for executions, but the company didn't agree with that practice and would not ship directly for use in lethal injections. The Associated Press obtained the letters through a public records request.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections eventually got the drug for the two May executions from a pharmacist who doesn't want to be identified, said department spokeswoman Tara Booth.
The article notes that Mississippi's supply, enough for four executions, expires in March.
In Nebraska, the Lincoln Journal Star reports, "Nebraska bought enough lethal injection drug for 166 executions. It's by Kevin O'Hanlon.
The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services recently bought such a large quantity of a drug used to kill death-row inmates by lethal injection that it now has enough to carry out 166 executions -- even though it has just 12 men on death row.
The state paid $2,056 to Kayem Pharmaceutical Pvt. Ltd. for 500 grams of sodium thiopental from a pharmaceuticals company in India. Corrections spokeswoman Dawn-Renee Smith said that was the minimum amount the company would sell.
And:
Mark Caverly of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said states can give or sell doses of the drug to other states for use in executions, as long as they are both registered with the DEA and the drug was properly imported.
"Basically, the answer is yes,'' he said. "There are some conditions to any controlled substance transfer."
A doctor, hospital, clinic or, in this case, the Corrections Department, can transfer up to 5 percent of the total controlled substances it buys in a year to another DEA-registered entity.
But Smith said Nebraska prison officials are not looking at doing so, even though the expiration date for the batch Nebraska got is August 2012.
"It will remain in our inventory," she wrote in an e-mail to the Journal Star. "Selling it is not an option we are pursuing."
The Nebraska Attorney General is currently seeking an execution date for one on the state's death row. Earlier coverage of the state's new supply of sodium thiopental is at the link.
Earlier coverage from Texas is at the link.
Comments