The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling in Cook v. FDA is available in Adobe .pdf format.
"FDA can't allow execution drug to be imported," is the AP report filed by Frederic J. Frommer. It's also available via the Republic.
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration violated its duty by allowing a misbranded and unapproved new drug to be imported for use in executions by lethal injection.
The three-judge panel affirmed a lower court ruling barring the FDA from allowing the importation of sodium thiopental - rejecting the agency's argument that it had discretion to allow unapproved drugs into the U.S.
The FDA policy "was not in accordance with law," wrote Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, joined by Judges David Sentelle and Judith W. Rogers. Ginsburg and Sentelle were appointed by President Ronald Reagan; Rogers was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Sodium thiopental is an anesthetic used to put inmates to sleep before other lethal drugs are administered. The case was brought by death row inmates in Tennessee, Arizona and California.
And:
"By its own account, however, the FDA has ways short of allowing importation of inadmissible drugs to counteract a drug shortage," the panel wrote, such as asking other firms to increase production and expediting review of regulatory submissions.
The panel reversed another part of the lower court's order and allowed state correctional departments to keep stocks of the drug they currently have.
Bloomberg News posts, "Death-Penalty Drug Importing Ruled Illegal by Appeals Court," by Andrew Zajac at its Businessweek site.
A drug used in some U.S. executions, sodium thiopental, can’t be imported into the country because it hasn’t been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled in a lawsuit filed by death row inmates.
The ruling upheld a lower-court decision that “permanently enjoined the FDA from allowing the importation of apparently misbranded or unapproved thiopental,” according to an opinion by Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg, writing for a three-judge panel.
The decision also blocked a second part of the lower-court ruling that required the FDA “to notify state correctional departments that the use of imported thiopental is unlawful and that existing stocks must be sent the FDA.”
The court can’t require states to turn in the drug to the FDA because they weren’t a party to the suit, Ginsburg wrote.
Six states -- Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee -- received shipments of sodium thiopental at issue in the complaint.
Earlier coverage of the FDA dispute begins with coverage of oral arguments in the case.
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