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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Unable to Obtain Drugs, Ohio Suspends Executions

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Ohio is extending its moratorium on capital punishment until at least 2017 because of difficulties obtaining the drugs needed to carry out executions, the state prisons agency said on Monday.

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said that 11 inmates who were scheduled to be executed next year would be put to death between 2017 and 2019. A man who was set to be put to death in January 2017 is now scheduled to die in 2019, according to the revised list.

The first person scheduled to die under the new timeline is Ronald Phillips, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 3-year-girl. Mr. Phillips, who was to be executed on Jan. 20, 2016, now faces death on Jan. 12, 2017.

Ohio has not executed an inmate since Jan. 16, 2014, when Dennis McGuire choked, gasped and clenched his fists for more than 20 minutes before succumbing to a combination of drugs being used for the first time in an execution in the United States. Executions by lethal injection typically take 10 to 15 minutes.

Mr. McGuire was put to death by lethal injection with a new and untried cocktail mixed with midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, an opioid derived from morphine.

Officials said in January that the state would switch to pentobarbital, a barbiturate, or sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, both previously used for executions. But continuing difficulties have forced them to delay executions since Mr. McGuire’s death.

State prison officials obtained a license from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to import sodium thiopental, which is not available in the United States. But the Food and Drug Administration warned that it was illegal for states to import drugs to be used in lethal injections.

On Monday, officials said the agency was continuing to “seek all legal means to obtain the drugs necessary to carry out court ordered executions, but over the past few years it has become exceedingly difficult to secure those drugs because of severe supply and distribution restrictions.”


Source: The New York Times, Ashley Southall, October 19, 2015

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Location: Ohio, USA
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