"US company not source of Landrigan execution drug," is the AP report posted by Paul Davenport, via the Arizona Capitol Times.
A knockout drug that Arizona plans to use in an upcoming execution was not made by the sole U.S. manufacturer, which means it likely came from another country, attorneys said during and after a state Supreme Court hearing Wednesday.
Jeffrey Landrigan, 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday for a 1989 killing.
His lawyers argue that using the drug sodium thiopental that has expired or was obtained from an unreliable source may not work correctly, potentially subjecting Landrigan to cruel and unusual punishment through death by suffocation.
They want the Supreme Court to order the state to disclose the source of the drug.
But prosecutors said they can’t identify the source because state law requires confidentiality for those involved with executions.
However, Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani did say when questioned by justices during a hearing Wednesday that Arizona obtained its supply from a lawful source and that Hospira Inc., the only U.S. maker of the drug, didn’t produce it.
What Cattani said about Hospira means Arizona’s source must be foreign, Dale Baich, a lawyer for Landrigan, said after the hearing.
Hospira is currently not making the drug and it is in short supply nationally.
Earlier coverage of the Arizona case begins here. Earlier coverage of the shortage of sodium thiopental begins here; related posts, in the lethal injection category index.
The Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky case, examined the constitutionality of lethal injection executions.
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