"Execution drugs mixed by U.S. pharmacies draw challenges from death row," is by Carey Gillam for Reuters.
Several U.S. states are turning to lightly regulated pharmacies for lethal injection drugs, prompting a host of court battles and at least one stay of execution because of concern tainted or impure drugs could inflict cruel and unusual punishment on inmates.
The scramble for alternative supplies comes as major pharmaceutical companies, especially based in Europe, have clamped down on sales of drugs for executions in recent years in order to avoid association with the punishment.
Missouri on Friday abandoned a plan to use the anesthetic propofol to put an inmate to death after the German maker of the drug, Fresenius Kabi, discovered that some had been sold to the state for executions, and suspended shipments to a U.S. distributor in retaliation.
Cut off from traditional sources of drugs, at least five states where the death penalty is legal - South Dakota, Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Colorado - are looking to "compounding" pharmacies, which typically mix drugs for prescriptions and are mostly exempt from federal oversight and face widely varying scrutiny from states.
Tainted drugs from a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy caused an outbreak last year of a rare type of meningitis that killed more than 50 people and sickened more than 700 in 20 states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The resulting outcry has sparked a drive in Congress for a larger role by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has warned of "special risks" from compounding pharmacies.
And:
The results of the court challenges have so far been mixed. In their biggest success, a Georgia judge in July granted a stay of execution for death row inmate Warren Lee Hill. Among the reasons Fulton County Superior Court Judge Gail Tusan cited were questions whether Georgia's lethal injection drug was "somehow contaminated or improperly compounded." The state Supreme Court is considering the case.
Other judges have allowed executions to go ahead. In a case brought by three Texas death row inmates, among them Michael Yowell, challenging the use of the drug pentobarbital from a compounder, a judge said he was not persuaded.
Aljazeera America posts, "New lethal-injection drugs raise new health, oversight questions," by Timothy Bella. Here's the beginning:
Inmates Michael Yowell and William Happ were on death row for more than 40 years combined. In Texas, Yowell shot his father, strangled his mother with a cord and burned their house to the ground in May 1998. In Florida, Happ kidnapped a 21-year-old girl, beating, raping and strangling her on Memorial Day weekend in 1986.
Before this month, Yowell and Happ were only connected by their lives as death-row inmates. Now, they will be connected in their deaths, both executed with controversial new drugs.
Texas and Florida are two states that can no longer use pentobarbital, the drug that 16 states have relied on in the last four years. Last week, Yowell was the first inmate in Texas to be executed with the compounded version of pentobarbital, a version of the drug that is not subject to federal oversight. On Tuesday in Florida, Happ will be the first inmate in the U.S. to be put to death using midazolam hydrochloride, a sedative that hasn’t been tested in executions.
Since 2010, pentobarbital has been the drug used for almost all of the lethal injections in the U.S. But medical organizations that produce pentobarbital in the past couple of years have agreed to prohibit the sale of these drugs to state prisons for the purpose of executions. Now, the supply for the state prisons has almost run dry.
The scarcity of the most commonly used lethal-injection drug of the past four years in the U.S. has left state prisons questioning where to look to next. Among those states are Texas and Florida, which are using untested workarounds that have come into question by human-rights groups and death-penalty experts.
“It’s a desperate act on the part of states,” says Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor. “It’s a dangerous act because it’s extremely risky. These states just can’t go jumping from drug to drug to drug.”
Coverage of Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas lethal injection issues, at the links. There are also several recent posts on compounding pharmacies, including
- Legislative Agreement on Compounding Pharmacy Regulations
- Dangers From Compounding Pharmacies Persist
- Continued Problems, Recalls Involving Compounding Pharmacies
Related posts are in the international and lethal injection indexes.
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