Drug shortage throws US executions into disarray

In the midst of a drug shortage that has already forced postponement of lethal injection executions across the United States, some states say they now have the drug in hand but are refusing to disclose its origin.

The unprecedented situation has been compounded by an inmate scheduled to die Tuesday but who is suing to stop his own execution, arguing that the drug which the state of Arizona intends to use may be counterfeit or unsafe.

Only one pharmaceutical company in the United States, Hospira, currently manufactures the drug, the anesthetic sodium thiopental.

But it is out of stock and will not be able to resume production until the first quarter of 2011, and Hospira's most recent batch is nearing its 2011 expiration date.

Some states like Texas and Ohio have enough thiopental to carry on with their execution schedules, but others like Kentucky have been forced to put capital punishment on hold.

"In this country we are so used to having executions, it makes legislators nervous" when they are halted, Deborah Denno, a criminal law professor at Fordham University in New York, told AFP.

"The more you delay, the more people realize that the death penalty doesn't serve the purpose it's supposed to serve."

The drug delay has caused some hiccups in the US capital punishment system.

The central state of Oklahoma has borrowed doses of the drug from its neighbor Arkansas.

More surprisingly, California and Arizona announced early this month they have procured thiopental and intend to carry out lethal injections, according to court documents. But prison authorities of both states refused to say where they had purchased the product.

For the lawyers for Arizona death-row inmate Jeffrey Landrigan, a convicted murderer scheduled to die next Tuesday, that raised enough questions about the safety and efficiency of the drug to bring the matter to court.

"Landrigan faces a significant risk that Arizona Department of Corrections unknowingly has obtained counterfeit or non-viable drug," they argued in a petition before the Arizona Supreme Court.

"If the 2nd or 3rd drugs in the state's protocol, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, were to be injected into a prisoner who was not properly anesthetized, the result would be excruciating pain in violation of the (US Constitution's) eighth amendment" which bars cruel and unusual punishment, they said.

"Accordingly, Landrigan needs information from the state to insure that sodium thiopental used in his execution is chemically stable and has not expired."

The lawyers noted that since Hospira is the only US manufacturer approved by the Food and Drug Administration, any new thiopental could only come from a foreign country.

Lawyers have put forward similar arguments in California.

Arizona has rejected the argument, but a federal judge has ordered the state to disclose the origins of the drug.

Professor Denno said the states may have acquired drugs of inferior quality.

"If it's coming for example from China, which has used lethal injection... we don't know who is making the thiopental in China or where that's coming from," she said. "Their system is completely secretive."

She described the drug shortage and resulting disarray as "troubling."

The Arizona district attorney's office argued that details about the transport and delivery of the drug must remain strictly confidential for security reasons.

At a recent hearing, an Arizona judge sounded puzzled about the need for FDA approval for the drug.

"What difference does that make?" judge Andrew Hurwitz asked.

"It strikes me as strange that the FDA law was meant to regulate executions... These are drugs that are going to be used to kill somebody."

An FDA spokeswoman, Karen Riley, told AFP that the agency was "not aware of any importations of this drug." FDA approval is required for all imports of medicines that are out of stock in the United States.

Thiopental is used as part of a 3-drug cocktail for lethal injections. It is the 1st drug to enter a victim's body, rendering him or her unconscious. A 2nd drug paralyzes the muscles, and a third stops the heart.

Source: Agence France-Presse, October 24, 2010

Urge Drug-Maker Hospira To Stop Supplying Lethal Injections

Executions are on hold in several states as supplies of key drug used in lethal injections have dried up, and the maker of the drug has a chance to stand up against what it sees as a twisted use of its product.

Hospira, the manufacturer of lethal-injection drug sodium thiopental, has said it does not support the drug's use in lethal injections.

Send a letter to Hospira CEO Christopher Begley urging him to use this opportunity to announce that his company will no longer supply the drug to state corrections departments for use in lethal injections.

PetitionText:

Dear Mr. Begley

I have read about your company’s Pentothal shortage and its impact on delaying executions in several states across the U.S. I’m writing to urge you to permanently stop supplying the drug to state corrections departments for the use in ending human lives.

Your company wrote in a letter in March that you “do not support the use of any of our products in capital punishment procedures.” If this is true, please take steps to end your practice of supplying this drug for use in lethal injections. You have an opportunity to make this shortage of the drug permanent, and I urge you to seize it.

The American Medical Association and other medical organizations have long said that the ethical obligation of medical professionals strictly prohibit a role in ending human lives. Your company should follow these ethical guidelines and refuse to participate in what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once called “the machinery of death.”

Hospira’s driving philosophy calls for “active citizenship” in your communities and describes the company as one that acts on its values. You stated your values in the March 31 letter: you aim to “save or improve lives.” Sodium thiopental is being used to end lives, and you have the power to stop it.

Please make the pledge to stop providing this drug for use in lethal injections.

Thank you,

Click here to add your name to this online petition.

Comments

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Iran | Four 'Woman, Life, Freedom' Protesters Sentenced to Hang by 'Death Judge' in Sham Trial

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 25 May 2026: Milad Armoun, Navid Najaran, Seyed Mohammad Mehdi Hosseini and Mehdi Imani, four “Woman, Life, Freedom” protesters, were sentenced to death by “Death Judge” Salavati after a grossly unfair trial. Defence counsel representing the defendants in what became known as the “Ekbatan case” have detailed the severe procedural and substantive flaws that violated fundamental due process rights and undermined the legitimacy of the rulings issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court. News of the judgement comes just days after the Criminal Court acquitted the defendants of murder charges.

China Executed 2,400 People in 2013, Dui Hua

A Chinese police officer lights a last cigarette for an inmate moments before his execution. The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide. Dui Hua bases its 2013 estimate on data points published in Southern Weekly that are consistent with information provided to Dui Hua by a judicial official earlier this year. The mainland magazine reported that a former senior judge of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) stated at a seminar in July that the number of executions had reached 1/10 of the highest number recorded since 1979. In 1983 - the 1st year of the Strike Hard campaign during which the power to approve capital punishment was given to provincial high courts - 2...

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Arizona executes Leroy McGill

Arizona executes inmate who set couple on fire in 'horrific attack' Arizona has executed Leroy McGill for setting 21-year-old Charles Perez and his 24-year-old girlfriend on fire. Perez died the next day and Perez survived with severe burn injuries. Arizona has executed a death row inmate for setting 2 people on fire more than 20 years ago, killing 1 of them and changing the other's life forever. The state executed Leroy McGill, 63, by lethal injection on Wednesday, May 20, for the 2002 murder of 21-year-old Charles Perez. McGill set Perez and his girlfriend on fire after they accused him of theft, court records say. Perez died of his injuries the next day while his girlfriend survived with severe burns.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog