The latest version of the AP report is, "Ohio to use assisted-suicide drug in executions," written by Andrew Welsh-Huggins. It's via the Washington Post.
States across the country have scrambled to find supplies of sodium thiopental after Hospira Inc., of Lake Forest, Ill., the drug's lone U.S. manufacturer, stopped producing it more than a year ago.
Hospira, which produced it for medical purposes and not for executions, announced Friday it would not resume production after authorities in Italy refused to allow its production if the company couldn't guarantee it would not be used for capital punishment.
Hospira said its plant in Italy was the only viable facility where it could be manufactured.
Arizona, Arkansas, California and Tennessee are among states that found a supply of sodium thiopental in England, but that source dried up after the British government banned the drug's export for use in executions.
Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, "Ohio switching to a new drug for lethal injections," by Reginald Fields.
"They ceased production of the drug and that drug is very hard to come by," said DRC spokesman Carlo LoParo. "The new drug will be manufactured in the U.S., and there is sufficient quantity."
Of the 39 states using lethal injection, nearly all use sodium thiopental but are also likely to have to find other drugs to carry out executions.
Hospira, in suburban Chicago, had already begun a slowdown in production of the drug, which caused a national shortage last year that threatened to postpone several executions here and in other states.
Ohio will use its remaining supply on Spisak, a self-proclaimed Nazi who killed three people at Cleveland State University in 1982.
LoParo said DRC officials will administer 5,000 mg -- about six times more than doctors use during surgical procedures -- to produce a humane death by first rendering the inmate comatose and then stopping the respiratory system.
"It will be impossible for a person to be revived," LoParo said.
Oklahoma currently uses pentobarbital as one of three drugs to carry out an execution. Fordham Law Professor Deborah W. Denno said that because Oklahoma uses three drugs, no one really knows how pentobarbital will work until Ohio becomes the first state to use it as a solo agent.
"It is pretty much going to be an experiment because they don't know what is going to happen," Denno said. "Oklahoma will say they have not had a problem, but they are also using these other two drugs with pentobarbital. This drug might act differently when you only use this drug alone."
Denno also questions where Ohio will purchase its supply of the drug. She said a Denmark drug maker that exports pentobarbital to the United States has already expressed concern the drug will be used for executions.
LoParo said Ohio does not reveal its drug suppliers for lethal injections. He also disputed Denno's claim that pentobarbital is used to euthanize animals, saying its suppliers sell only to hospitals.
"It may not be used in Ohio to euthanize animals but it is used to euthanize animals elsewhere," Denno said. "I think what they are trying to do is distinguish the execution of humans from the euthanasia of animals."
Alan Johnson writes, "Ohio switching its execution drug," for the Columbus Dispatch.
For the second time in 15 months, Ohio will execute a prisoner with a drug never before used alone to kill a human being.
The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said yesterday that it will switch to pentobarbital, a fast-acting barbiturate, from sodium thiopental for lethal-injection executions, beginning with Johnnie Baston of Lucas County, on March 10.
Prisons officials said the change was necessary because of a national shortage of sodium thiopental, the single drug Ohio used for the past nine executions, beginning with Kenneth Biros on Dec. 8, 2009. Before that, the state used a three-drug combination.
And:
The state, through Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's office, communicated the drug switch in a motion filed yesterday with U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost, who is considering a lawsuit filed by several inmates challenging the state's lethal-injection procedures.
The announcement was greeted with skepticism by Ohio Public Defender Tim Young, whose office represents Baston.
"I find it disconcerting that you have prominent people like Ohio Supreme Court Justice (Paul) Pfeifer and former prisons director Terry Collins who have called repeatedly for a review of the death penalty. ... Instead of listening to those voices, we are charging ahead with an untested drug, an untested protocol as part of the machinery of death."
Fordham University Law Professor Deborah W. Denno, a death-penalty and lethal-injection expert, said Ohio's change is "predictable but disturbing. ... It is regrettable that Ohio is blindly following in Oklahoma's muddy footsteps. Further problems are inevitable."
Dr. Jonathan Groner, a Columbus pediatric surgeon and death-penalty opponent, said pentobarbital is an anti-convulsant drug often used to control seizures and in dealing with traumatic brain injuries. He said it has a "high rate of reactive airway problems, meaning the person has the possibility of suffocating to death."
"Animal euthanasia drug to be used on death row," by Tom Beyerlein in the Dayton Daily News.
Corrections officials have notified U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost of Columbus, who is presiding over an ongoing class-action federal challenge to the constitutionality of Ohio’s execution methods.
The suit is prompted by the 2009 attempted execution of Rommell Broom, which was called off after executioners couldn’t find a viable vein for the insertion of intravenous lines.
Attorneys for the inmates in the case also were notified.
Oklahoma in December became the first state to use pentobarbital, in conjunction with other drugs, and has used it in three executions.
LoParo said pentobarbital will be used in the same dosage as sodium thiopental, which has been in increasingly short supply.
Earlier coverage of the Ohio drug switch begins at the link; earlier coverage of the state's 2009 botched execution attempt involving Romell Broom, at the link. Related posts are in the lethal injection index.
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