Carol Williams posts, "California now has enough drugs to execute 175 death row inmates," at the Los Angeles Times. A correction revises the estimate in the headline, however.
Corrections officials told a federal judge Tuesday that they have imported enough sodium thiopental from Arizona and Britain to execute 175 death row prisoners.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation last month purchased 521 grams of the drug from Archimedes Pharma for $36,415, said department spokeswoman Terry Thornton.
Prison officials also acquired 12 grams of the drug at no cost from the Arizona Department of Corrections on Sept. 30, Thornton said.
The source of the execution drug was disclosed in a report to U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose after the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California made a public records request and a San Francisco judge gave corrections officials until Tuesday to explain where it got the drug no longer available from the sole U.S. manufacturer.
And:
The sodium thiopental bought from the British manufacturer is currently being stored at an East Coast site pending testing and approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Thornton.
It was shipped ahead of Britain’s decision late last month to bar exports of the drug, which is also used in surgery and to euthanize animals. All European nations have renounced capital punishment, and Britain came under fire for making the drug available to U.S. states for executions.
California has the nation’s largest death row, with 713 condemned prisoners.
Also:
An earlier story about the state’s acquisition of 537 grams of sodium thiopental said that quantity was sufficient to execute 175 condemned prisoners. Newly revised lethal-injection procedures require the state to have a backup supply of each drug loaded and ready for use at each execution, which would expend twice the necessary amount of the drug per execution. The new rules also require that an unspecified quantity be used for training purposes.
"California Prisons release details of lethal injection drug acquisition," is the title of Julie Small's report this morning at KPCC-FM, Southern California Public Radio.
California prison officials have released hundreds of pages of documents on the state’s supply of a lethal injection drug. They sent those documents to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California after a court ordered them to do it.
California uses 6 grams of a barbiturate called sodium thiopental to anesthetize inmates during executions. The drug renders the inmate unconscious before a second drug stops his or her heart.
The state had to cancel an execution this year in part because its supply of sodium thiopental expired and the only domestic manufacturer of the stuff ran out of supplies. Shortly after that, Corrections acquired 12 grams of sodium thiopental, and month later it acquired another 521 grams. But officials wouldn’t say where or how or how much it cost.
"That shipment of the drugs was manufactured by a company, a pharmaceutical company based in England, Archimedes Pharma. They supply the drug to distributors," explains spokeswoman Terry Thornton.
And:
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed a public records request two months ago to get that information and sued to enforce it.
Death penalty opponents doubt the legality of foreign supplies of sodium thiopental. They say those supplies may be less effective and could subject inmates to excruciating pain during executions.
Corrections’ Terry Thornton says the federal Food and Drug Administration is reviewing California’s English supply of sodium thiopental – as expected.
"We are working with the FDA, we always have been working the FDA," says Thornton. "We have approval from the DEA, we have approval of this shipment from U.S. customs and as soon as the FDA releases it will be shipped to California."
Thornton says the department always intended to comply with the ACLU’s request for information on California’s sodium thiopental supply. But she says the state agency's attorneys had to consider numerous lawsuits, state and federal laws that affect what information it could and could not release. It also took some time to compile and copy the 1,192 pages of information it's released.
Earlier coverage from California begins with this post.
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