Last night, Virginia carried out its first execution of 2011, and its first to use a three-drug coktail that included the Lundbeck-manufactured drug, pentobarbital.
International Business Times reports, "Lethal Injections: Lundbeck Urges State of Virgina to Stop Using their Drugs."
The state of Virginia authorities obtained the drug pentobarbital before Lundbeck could impose restrictions over the distribution of the drug. It is an attempt to make sure the drug is not used to perform executions in prisons.
"We're in the business to improve people's lives, so the use of pentobarbital to end people's lives contradicts everything that we're in business to do," Matt Flesch, Lundbeck spokesman, told BBC in an interview.
In the U.S. 34 out of 50 states allow capital punishment. It becomes difficult for prison authorities to find the right drugs for their lethal injection all the time, and hence they go for substitute drugs.
Many pharmaceutical companies are trying their best to make sure that their products are not used as a component of lethal injections.
The BBC News report is, "Virginia executes Jerry Jackson amid death-drug row."
So far in 2011, US states have executed 23 prisoners using that drug, prompting strong condemnation from Lundbeck.
While the drug, sold under the brand name Nembutal, comprises less than 1% of the company's sales, Lundbeck said it declined to stop production because doctors it had surveyed said they would have trouble treating severe epilepsy without it.
But the company last month announced restrictions on the drug's distribution in an effort to keep it from being shipped to prisons in US states that practise capital punishment.
Under that programme, Lundbeck will review orders for pentobarbital and deny them to prisons in capital punishment states.
Purchasers will have to sign a form affirming the drug is for their own use and will not be used for capital punishment and that they will not re-distribute the drug without the company's approval.
"While the company has never sold the product directly to prisons and therefore can't make guarantees, we are confident that our new distribution program will play a substantial role in restricting prisons' access to Nembutal for misuse as part of lethal injection," chief executive Ulf Wiinberg said.
The company has also sent letters to 16 states that have used or have said they would use pentobarbital in lethal injection expressing their opposition and concern, Mr Flesch said.
"Don't Use Our Drug Pentobarbital To Execute People, Lundbeck Tells State Of Virginia," by Christian Nordqvist is at Medical News Today.
The AP report is, "Rapist and killer of Williamsburg widow put to death," by Dena Potter. It's via the Virginian-Pilot.
Jerry Terrell Jackson, 30, was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m. Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center. He was sentenced to death for the 2001 rape and murder of seamstress Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment.
Asked whether he had any final words, Jackson shook his head and said "no" under his breath. As he waited for the drugs to be administered, he tapped his foot as he lay strapped to a stainless steel gurney. The execution team took about 15 minutes to insert two intravenous lines, one into each arm. Within four minutes of the lines being inserted, he was pronounced dead.
And:
Jackson nearly got a reprieve last year when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema allowed a two-day evidentiary hearing in which Jackson's brother and sister testified about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and stepfather while growing up.
Brinkema ordered that Jackson at the time should receive a new sentencing hearing, saying the testimony "painted a graphic picture of an unwarranted, continuous, sadistic course of conduct that terrorized and dehumanized Jackson throughout his childhood." But earlier this year, a federal appeals court overturned that ruling on a technicality.
It was the 32nd execution in the nation this year; the 1,66th post-Furman execution since 1977.
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