States look overseas for scarce execution drug

Looks like it has come to this.

ATLANTA – Prison officials around the country have been going to extraordinary — and in at least one case, legally questionable — lengths to obtain a scarce lethal-injection drug, securing it from middlemen in Britain and a manufacturer in India and borrowing it from other states to keep their executions on track, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.

"You guys in AZ are life savers," California prisons official Scott Kernan emailed a counterpart in Arizona, with what may have been unintentional irony, in appreciation for 12 grams of the drug sent in September. "Buy you a beer next time I get that way."

The wheeling and dealing come amid a severe shortage of sodium thiopental, a sedative that is part of the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by nearly all 34 death penalty states. The shortage started last year, after Hospira Inc., the sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug and the only sodium-thiopental maker approved by the Food and Drug Administration, stopped making it.

It seems like even when they try to escapse death in prison they always find a way to rush the process quickly.


news.yahoo.com...

What do you guys think? Are they overdoing it with borrowing by death drugs from other countries or is this the new path to the prison system. I guess in the end death will always come to those trapped in the system.

I'm still undecided on the legality of the death penalty. While it's simple to say "once they're found gulity put em down" the simple fact is in America we have an insane amount of overturned convictions due to the fact that overzealous police and prosecutors will ignore or supress evidence that points to someones innocence to keep conviction rates high. How can we say that we are delivering justice when a wrongful conviction leading to a death sentence is pretty much murder by the state?


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reply to post by zcflint05


I agree. The system is not perfect and lots of cases have turned out to be false but how can we make sure things go right when they usually go wrong? Before they put criminals to death they should at least have proper evidence to support the case before putting them behind bars. I can only imagine how many people have been put to death that were actually innocent all because the system failed them.

I know that if I were on death row, I'd rather go out by firing squad. Show it for what it is, instead of sugar coating it the way they do with a quiet medical procedure. I'd want my gruesome end to be on the conscience of those pulling the trigger for the rest of their lives. They would be living through me in a certain way.

reply to post by Stop-loss!



"You guys are a real life saver" You couldn't make sh*t like that up if you tried

That's crazy. I bet that drug costs the taxpayers an arm and a leg. I say use rope and hang them: it's reusable.

I don't know what the problem is.
For one....can't they use the same stuff that they use to euthanize dogs?
For another....there are other drugs that will do the trick, given in sufficient quanity.
There was a doctor who commited suicide with one of them a few years ago.
It is common and cheap.