Lawyers for 2 on death row try to block U.K. drug export

Lethal injection drug at heart of court fight

A drug used in lethal injection executions in the United States has become the focus of a British court fight over export controls.

The drug, sodium thiopental, is one of three used in such executions, a painkiller that first renders death-row inmates unconscious. There's a shortage of this drug in the United States, and some executions have been delayed, but it is still available in Britain.

However, opponents of the death penalty argue that the export of the drug violates human rights, particularly given the British government's commitment to abolishing executions.

In November, a human rights group in London sued the government, arguing that a death row inmate in Tennessee, Edmund Zagorski, will be executed if the drug is exported. The court fight in London today involves both Zagorski and Ralph Base, both of whom are on death row.

Earlier this month, Britain's Business Secretary Vince Cable refused to ban the export of the drug under the Export Control Act, saying it was medicine whose primary use was as an anaesthetic and that "legitimate trade of medical value would be affected by any restriction on the export of this product from the U.K."

Today at London's High Court, according to The Press Association and other reports, lawyer Nathalie Lieven argued that Mr. Cable's refused to ban the export was irrational.

“There are strong grounds for fearing that the U.K. will be, or already has been, the source of drugs used in the claimants’ proposed executions, and for many other persons on death row in the U.S.,” Ms. Lieven said, according to Bloomberg News.

"Such executions would be a clear violation of fundamental human rights principles to which the U.K. has consistently, and very recently, affirmed its commitment.

Zagorski, convicted of 2 murders, has been on death row since 1984, while Baze, convicted of killing two police officers, is on death row Kentucky, where he has been for 17 years.

"Having failed to persuade Vince Cable that it is wrong for the U.K. to be facilitating the death penalty in the U.S., we hope that the High Court will now compel him to exercise the powers of export control which parliament has granted him to prevent just this sort of violation of human rights," Richard Stein, of the law firm Leigh Day & Co., told The Independent.

"There is a list which covers guillotines, gas chambers and electrocution equipment."

Source: Globe & Mail, November 17, 2010