New Statesman publishes the OpEd, "Can Big Pharma end the death penalty in the US?" It's by Clare Algar, executive director of Reprieve. It's also available at the New Republic. Here's the beginning:
A man walks into a pharmacy with an execution warrant and is given the drugs necessary for execution by lethal injection. This sounds like a very bad joke, but is in fact what is going on at the moment in Ohio. And here is why.
Thirty two states retain the death penalty in the US, but a new obstacle is making it increasingly difficult for them to carry it out. Pharmaceutical companies are taking a moral stand. The manufacturers of the drugs required by state departments of corrections for executions are saying they will not allow their products to be employed in this way. Manufacturers in the UK, US, Denmark, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and India have taken steps to prevent their drugs being used in executions.
This has had an astonishing effect. Shortages of lethal injection drugs and attendant litigation have resulted in moratoria - an official halting of executions - in Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee. Historically, state entities do not move directly from having the death penalty to abolition. They begin with a moratorium on killing and then, when the population has grown unused to executions, the death penalty can be abolished. Of the states mentioned above, Maryland abolished the death penalty this year and abolition bills have been put forward in Nebraska, Colorado and California. California came very close to passing its abolition bill - voting against by 52 to 48. Meanwhile, the media coverage of the issue has exposed the unsavoury details of the execution process and created opportunities for serious debate about abolition.
Earlier coverage of problems with the supply of lethal injection drugs begins at the link.
Related posts are in the international and lethal injection indexes.
Comments