AP's Andrew Welsh-Huggins writes, "States: Death-penalty drug scramble, higher cost." It's via Business Week.
States not only are having an increasingly difficult time getting the injectable drugs to carry out death sentences, they're also paying as much as 10 times more for the chemicals as in years past.
Ohio only has 40 grams of pentobarbital, enough for seven executions scheduled through February, meaning a likely scramble to find enough for the four scheduled beyond that.
Texas, with the country's busiest death chamber, says it has enough for eight more executions but won't comment on supplies past September. It used the drug Thursday night for the execution of Mexican national Humberto Leal for the 1994 rape-slaying of a 16-year-old girl in San Antonio, despite White House pleas for a Supreme Court stay.
Ohio, Texas and several other states switched to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental this year, after the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium pentothal said it would discontinue production.
Lake Forest, Ill.-based Hospira, which strongly opposed the drug's use in executions, stopped manufacturing it altogether. Hospira said it couldn't promise authorities in Italy, where the drug was to be produced, that it could control the product's distribution all the way to the end user to guarantee it wouldn't be used in executions.
States then switched to pentobarbital, but Denmark-based Lundbeck Inc., the only U.S.-licensed maker of the injectable barbiturate, said July 1 it would put the medication off-limits for capital punishment. It announced a new, tightly controlled distribution system, intended to keep the drug out of the hands of prisons while ensuring deliveries to hospitals and treatment centers for therapeutic purposes, as in the treatment of epilepsy.
It's unclear whether states will be able to stockpile any remaining pentobarbital, which is marketed as Nembutal. Lundbeck says it believes little inventory is left for states to purchase following the announcement. And with an expiration date of about two years, states would have to switch by 2013 anyway.
And:
States got sticker shock when they switched to pentobarbital. Ohio used to spend $218 for 5 grams of sodium thiopental, which it used in combination with two drugs and then, beginning in 2009, as a stand-alone injection.
Now, Ohio spends $2,158 for the same 5-gram dose of pentobarbital, or $6,474 for executions in March, April and May.
Ohio prisons spokesman Carlo LoParo said the state had no alternative but to pay the higher price. He wouldn't comment on the state's plans beyond the February execution.
Texas spent $1,273 on the pentobarbital used to execute Cary Kerr in May for raping and killing a woman 10 years ago. That's almost exactly how much the state spent on sodium thiopental for 17 executions in 2010, or $1,224.
Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina are among other states that confirmed the cost spike to The Associated Press.
Earlier coverage of Lundbeck and the use of pentobarbital begins at the link. Related posts are in the lethal injection index.
Comments