"Execution-drug import papers raise questions," is the title of Michael Kiefer's report in today's Arizona Republic. Here's an extended excerpt:
Three shipments of drugs imported by the Arizona Department of Corrections were represented to U.S. customs and Food and Drug Administration officials as being for use on animals despite being intended for use in inmate executions.
According to documents obtained by The Arizona Republic under the federal Freedom of Information Act, two batches of the anesthetic sodium thiopental and one batch of the paralytic-drug pancuronium bromide were brought into the country from Britain last September and October and were described on federal import paperwork as being for "Animal (Food Producing)."
Thiopental, a painkiller, is used in executions to sedate the condemned convict, while pancuronium bromide renders the convict unable to move. A third drug, potassium chloride, is then injected to stop the heart.
The source of thiopental has been a matter of legal and political controversy in several U.S. states and European countries.
Defense attorneys have raised questions about whether the drugs were legally obtained and whether they were certain to be effective. Thiopental is meant to render an inmate unable to feel suffering during an execution. If the painkiller is ineffective, they attorneys argue, the execution could be cruel and unusual punishment.
Arizona has two executions scheduled during the next two weeks in which the drug is supposed to be used, although legal challenges are in the works.
State Corrections Director Charles Ryan said in a written statement that the department's execution drugs were "procured lawfully" and that the department in dealings with FDA and customs "clearly stated that the purpose for acquiring these chemicals was to carry out an execution."
It was not immediately clear whether the drugs obtained were, in fact, manufactured for animal use, or if the nature of the drugs was misstated in FDA documents.
"If FDA becomes aware of incorrect information in a filing, the agency has many options which could include further investigations and, where appropriate, pursuing civil or criminal sanctions," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said.
Thiopental is used for veterinary anesthesia but not for animal euthanasia.
Dr. Tom Doherty, a veterinary anesthesiologist in Knoxville, Ky., said, "You can mix it up in any strength you wish. But it wouldn't be used in (human) clinical use if it's labeled for animals. That wouldn't be allowed."
Burgess said federal approval of veterinary drugs takes other factors into account, such as whether the drugs are to be used on animals that are food-producing and calculating effects on the environment given that animals usually urinate and defecate on the ground.
"Animals are not equivalent to small humans. There are great species differences, and it's not always a matter of dose," Burgess said. "So, if a drug is approved for animals, it does not mean that it is safe to use in a human and vice versa."
Thiopental has been virtually unavailable in the U.S. since last summer and has not been manufactured domestically since 2009. That prompted several state governments to look to import it.
At first, the FDA officially said that there were no legal means of importing it. But late last December, after at least five states had obtained and used foreign drugs for executions, the agency reversed its policy and said it would not police drugs used for lethal injection.
Attorneys in several states have sued the FDA over that policy. Last week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized a thiopental supply from Georgia to investigate whether it had been legally imported. This week, attorneys in Arizona and Kentucky asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate supplies in their states.
A recent report from Great Britain indicates that there have been 12 adverse reactions to British-produced thiopental. Lawyers in several states maintain that it may not have worked efficiently in recent executions, claiming that at least three men died with their eyes still partly open, suggesting they were not fully sedated before the other chemicals were administered.
Documents released to The Republic by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Thursday show that the Arizona execution drugs - which were used last October to execute Jeffrey Landrigan and are expected to be used over the next two weeks to execute two more prisoners here - were labeled in import papers as drugs for use on animals.
This afternoon, the AP has circulated "States look overseas for scarce execution drug." It's available from the Washington Post as, "States beg, borrow and import scarce execution drug; Ga. is investigated." It's by Greg Bluestein and datelined Atlanta; AP writers Brett Barrouquere in Louisville, Ky., Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tenn., Paul Elias in San Francisco, Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., Jeannie Nuss in Little Rock, Ark., and Gregory Katz in London contributed to the report.
Prison officials around the country have been going to extraordinary — and in at least one case, legally questionable — lengths to obtain a scarce lethal-injection drug, securing it from middlemen in Britain and a manufacturer in India and borrowing it from other states to keep their executions on track, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.
"You guys in AZ are life savers," California prisons official Scott Kernan emailed a counterpart in Arizona, with what may have been unintentional irony, in appreciation for 12 grams of the drug sent in September. "Buy you a beer next time I get that way."
The wheeling and dealing come amid a severe shortage of sodium thiopental, a sedative that is part of the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by nearly all 34 death penalty states. The shortage started last year, after Hospira Inc., the sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug and the only sodium-thiopental maker approved by the Food and Drug Administration, stopped making it.
As supplies dwindled, at least six states — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Nebraska and Tennessee — obtained sodium thiopental overseas, with several of them citing Georgia as the trailblazer.
Documents obtained through open-records requests show Georgia managed to execute inmates in September and January after getting the drug from Dream Pharma, a distributor that shares a building with a driving school in a gritty London neighborhood. Dream Pharma's owner has not returned several calls and emails for comment, and an AP reporter who visited the office last week was told the owner was not available.
Last week, however, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's entire supply — effectively blocking the scheduling of any further executions — because of concerns over whether the state circumvented the law. "We had questions about how the drug was imported to the U.S.," agency spokesman Chuvalo Truesdell said, declining to elaborate.
Federal regulations require states to register with the DEA before importing a controlled substance and to notify the agency once they have it. John Bentivoglio, a former Justice Department attorney who represents a condemned Georgia inmate, said in a February letter that Georgia appears to have broken those rules, and that such violations mean "adulterated, counterfeit or otherwise ineffective" sodium thiopental could be used in executions, subjecting prisoners to extreme pain in violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
And:
The documents obtained by the AP show that authorities in Kentucky frantically reached out to more than two dozen other states, several companies and the federal Bureau of Prisons throughout 2010 in hopes of finding sodium thiopental. Kentucky even considered carrying out three executions in quick succession before the state's supply expired. Kentucky officials were getting rejected everywhere they turned.
"I am beginning to think drug companies and suppliers are not real happy to have to supply us for this use," Phil Parker, warden of the Kentucky State Penitentiary, wrote in a July email. He was right. Hospira has publicly objected to the use of its drugs in executions.
Kentucky finally bought 18 grams last month from a Georgia pharmacy.
Nebraska announced in January that it had acquired 500 grams from Kayem Pharmaceutics of India, the minimum amount available for sale. That is enough for nearly 170 executions; the state has a dozen men on death row.
Earlier coverage from Arizona begins at the link.
Related posts are in the lethal injection index. Relevant posts include:
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