"Bruning asks FDA to fight drug order," is the title of Martha Stoddard's report in the Saturday Omaha World-Herald.
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is urging federal officials to appeal a court order regarding a drug used in executions.
Bruning made the request in a letter sent Friday to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At issue is whether Nebraska must turn over to federal officials its supply of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used to carry out lethal injections.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered the FDA on March 27 to notify all state corrections departments having “any foreign manufactured thiopental” that use of the drug is illegal. He further ordered the return of all such thiopental to the FDA.
Last week, an FDA official sent a letter asking Nebraska to make arrangements for returning its supply of the drug.
Bruning responded with the Friday letter, which said the U.S. district court ruling “was clearly wrong” and contrary to a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
“Other than the court's erroneous order, we are unaware of any evidence or reasons why the Department of Correctional Services should be required to return any thiopental in its possession,” the letter stated.
The letter did not question whether the court order applied to the Nebraska supply of sodium thiopental.
Bruning brought up that issue in a press release, which said the case before Leon had no bearing on the sodium thiopental in the possession of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.
"Bruning urges FDA to appeal lethal injection drug ruling," is by Kevin O'Hanlon for the Lincoln Journal Star.
Nebraska's letter to the FDA says Leon's ruling "was clearly wrong and contrary" to the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Heckler v. Cheney. That ruling gave complete authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services "to decide how and when" to enforce provisions of the federal FDA Act.
Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, who represents death-row inmate Michael Ryan, has been arguing that Nebraska should not be allowed to use the sodium thiopental made by Naari.
Nebraska bought the drug from a middleman named Chris Harris, who had bought it from Naari.
Soucie said Harris and his company, Harris Pharma LLP, were not authorized to sell the drug, which was in the form of samples meant for use in testing. That, he contends, means Harris misappropriated the thiopental from Naari, and Nebraska prison officials are in possession of stolen property.
Nebraska is among 10 states that have purchased the drug from foreign sources. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has seized supplies from several because they were imported illegally or because of questions over how they were manufactured.
Nebraska twice has bought sodium thiopental made overseas. The DEA did not seize the first batch but told the state it could not use it because it was imported illegally. Nebraska then got an import license and bought the supply from Harris.
Sodium thiopental recently became even harder to get after the European Union began to prohibit export of some barbituric acids, including sodium thiopental.
In his ruling, Leon said the FDA was undermining its own policy of maintaining a closed drug distribution system designed to keep dangerous drugs out of U.S. commerce.
"Fight with feds over controversial execution drug doesn't have Nebraska leaping to make change," is the AP filing by Margery A. Beck. It's via the Republic.
As Nebraska officials seek to fend off attempts by federal authorities to take the state's supply of a drug used in executing death row inmates, the tug-of-war has some wondering why state officials don't simply use a different drug.
As Maren Chaloupka, a Scottbluff attorney who has represented death row inmates, puts it, "I've wondered that myself. It seems to be just bullheadedness."
At the center of the controversy is the state's supply of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic used to put inmates to sleep before other lethal drugs are administered during an execution. Like many other states, Nebraska obtained a stock of the drug from a foreign supplier after the drug's U.S. manufacturer announced last year it would no longer produce it.
But unlike many other states, Nebraska has fought for more than a year to cling to its supply.
Nebraska's first batch of the drug obtained from an India-based drug company in January 2011 was ruled to have been illegally imported. The state then obtained a new batch from another Indian source late last year, but the Swiss manufacturer of the drug, Naari AG, said that the sodium thiopental that Nebraska bought was a sample intended only to be used for evaluation purposes as an anesthetic in Zambia.
Then, last month, a U.S. judge found the federal Food and Drug Administration wrongly allowed other states to import the drug. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon also ordered the FDA to immediately notify any state correctional department with foreign-manufactured thiopental that its use is prohibited by law, and that the drug must be returned to the FDA.
On Friday, the Nebraska attorney general's office refused a request from the FDA to turn over Nebraska's batch of sodium thiopental. The attorney general instead suggested the FDA appeal the federal judge's ruling.
Many of the nation's other 33 death penalty states — including Texas and Arizona — have switched to an alternative anesthetic, pentobarbital.
The Nebraska Attorney General's office referred questions about whether state officials would consider changing to a different anesthetic for lethal injections to the Department of Correctional Services.
Earlier coverage of the Nebraska lethal injection drug dispute begins at the link.
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