Arizona Enlists Major Law Firm To Import Execution Drugs From India

National law firm Alston & Bird is fighting the FDA, asking it to release execution drugs that Arizona imported from India. The state has said it will sue if the FDA doesn't do so.

The Arizona Department of Corrections has enlisted the help of a national law firm in its fight against the federal government to import execution drugs, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based law firm with more than 700 lawyers and offices across the country, has taken on representation of the department in its fight against the Food and Drug Administration, which has detained 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental since this past summer that were slated for delivery to the department.

Arizona, Texas, and Nebraska purchased the drug from a man in India named Chris Harris - a man without a pharmaceutical background. Harris has been the subject of ongoing BuzzFeed News coverage.

The FDA warned Arizona and the other states that importing the drug would be illegal, as it is an unapproved new drug and has no FDA-approved manufacturer. The states ordered the sodium thiopental anyway.

Nebraska's shipment never left India, but Texas and Arizona's shipments did cross the ocean - only to be stopped by the FDA at U.S. airports.

Alston & Bird, which identifies itself as "counsel for the Arizona Department of Corrections," is arguing on behalf of the department that the FDA should release the drugs since they would be used "only for law enforcement."

"The restrictive legend on the label ('For law enforcement purpose only') makes that clear," Alston & Bird partner Daniel Jarcho wrote in a letter to the FDA dated Oct. 23, 2015. "The purpose of [the statutes] is to provide warnings to patients as they take their own drugs."

"Here there will be no lay patient 'users' taking the detained drugs. This is a circumstance in which the imported substance is a drug that will not be used for medicinal purposes at all," Jarcho, based out of the firm's D.C. office, wrote.

Arizona is arguing that, since the drugs are for lethal injection, they are exempt from the requirements the FDA cited in detaining the shipment.

In the letter, Jarcho also "demand[ed]" that the FDA and Customs and Border Protection redact or omit information about the drug supplier "unless required by law to release it," citing Arizona's secrecy law surrounding executions.

BuzzFeed News, however, previously was able to determine that Arizona and Texas purchased the drugs from Harris' company, Harris Pharma. Harris registered a site with the FDA claiming that it could be used to manufacturer drugs, although that site was just a small office space. The location he has provided to the DEA is an old apartment building he no longer lives in - and that he left while still owing rent.

According to FDA documents, the drugs Harris sold were manufactured by a company in India called Health Biotech Limited.

Arizona's letter to the FDA made no mention of a 2012 federal court order that the FDA had "a mandatory obligation ... to refuse to admit the misbranded and unapproved drug, thiopental, into the United States." The order also directed the FDA to stop "permitting the entry of, or releasing any future shipments of, foreign manufactured thiopental that appears to be misbranded or [an unapproved new drug]." A federal appeals court upheld the order in 2013.

Arizona, like Texas and Nebraska, has also enlisted the help of a former FDA employee named Ben England who testified on the other side of the 2012 case. In that case, he argued on behalf of death row inmates that the drugs violated federal law.

In a statement, an Alston & Bird spokesperson would only say, "[W]e are not at liberty to discuss the matter." According to his firm bio, Jarcho previously represented the FDA "in federal court civil and criminal litigation" while working as a trial attorney at Justice Department.

England, who is cc'ed on the Jarcho letter and identified as "Co-counsel" to the Arizona Department of Corrections, has not responded to numerous requests for an interview. England, who previously was a longtime investigator for the FDA, also has been the subject of ongoing BuzzFeed News coverage.

The FDA is continuing to detain the shipments, the Arizona Department of Corrections said. In a recent hearing in a death penalty case, an attorney with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's office said that the state would sue if the FDA did not release the drugs.

"There's no further administrative exhaustion needed [if the FDA denies the request]?" U.S. District Judge Neil Wake asked.

"No. At that point we would proceed in court to challenge," assistant attorney general Jeffrey Sparks said.

The Arizona attorney general's office told BuzzFeed News this week that it was not representing the Department of Corrections on the FDA appeal, but it did not immediately respond when asked if the office would represent the Department of Corrections if they chose to sue.

Source: BuzzFeedNews, January 29, 2016

- Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com - Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog