"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.
But one anesthesiologist whose videotaped deposition was played in court testified that the 5,000 milligrams of pentobarbital the state plans to use is enough to cause unconsciousness and even death within minutes.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a federal judge's ruling against the inmates.
Experts testified at the November hearing that no other U.S. state uses pentobarbital during executions. Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie and the head of a Washington, D.C.-based group that has been critical of capital punishment both said in interviews Wednesday that they believed Duty would be the first inmate in the country put to death using the drug.
"In all my research, I have not seen that (pentobarbital) has been used before in this context,'" Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in a telephone interview. But, he noted, "Some states don't say exactly what drugs are used and have kept that out of the public eye.'"
And:
The Federal Public Defender's office declined comment on whether any last-minute appeals were in the works.
Earlier coverage of Oklahoma's lethal injection drug switch is at the link.
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