Death Penalty News

At a time in which the Arizona Department of Corrections is facing criticism for crumbling infrastructure, substandard medical care, and understaffing, the department has spent $1.5 million to purchase the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. The exorbitant price, experts say, is a function of the questionable use of the drug for non-medical purposes and the secretive nature of the transaction. Records obtained by The Guardian show that, in October 2020, Arizona ordered 1,000 vials of the barbiturate pentobarbital. Each one-gram vial cost the state $1,500, for what the newspaper described as a “jaw-dropping” total of $1.5 million. A heavily redacted invoice shows that the state ordered 4–8 “unlabeled” jars to be shipped in “Unmarked jars and boxes” to an Arizona location “to be determined.” The state’s execution protocol calls for five grams of the drug, so the vials would be enough for 200 executions in a state that has 119 people on death row. Assistant fe...

Attorney General Mark Brnovich sent a pointed message Thursday to Gov. Doug Ducey: I can get you the necessary drugs when you're finally ready to resume executions. Brnovich said he has offered not once but twice before to help the governor and the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry to find a legal source of lethal chemicals. To date, the governor has not responded. Now the attorney general said he's done the work that technically is the responsibility of the state agency. And Brnovich said now that he's found a supplier there's no reason for further delay by Ducey who, in his 6 years as governor, has yet to sign a death warrant. Ducey was noncommittal. "This is the first letter that I've received saying that there's an actual solution to what was a lack of product that's there,'' he said Thursday. "And it was just received." What Ducey said he wants, are "the details," including what...

For years, the state of Nebraska has had a troubled history of cutting corners in its zealous pursuit of lethal-injection drugs to keep its death penalty program alive. In November, the state announced that it would use an experimental drug cocktail not previously used in the United States to carry out its next execution. What the state didn’t reveal, however, is that it was violating federal law when acquiring the ingredients for the lethal cocktail. In a complaint filed today by the ACLU of Nebraska with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the ACLU has shown that the state of Nebraska is playing fast and loose with DEA registrations in order to covertly obtain and store the drugs it intends to use for executing prisoners. The DEA should seize the drugs Nebraska has unlawfully obtained before they can be used in an execution. As the complaint shows, a person or entity, including government agencies, needs a DEA registration to import a controlled substance. Federal law al...

Governments have gone to great effort to keep the sources and methods of their death penalty regimes secret. In November, the Omaha World-Herald sent a simple records request to the Nebraska state government. Along with several other news outlets, the paper wanted to know the source of the drugs to be used in an upcoming execution—the first in the state in more than 20 years. In the past the Nebraska Department of Corrections would have provided this information, but now it refused. Officials there insisted that the supplier of the drugs the state intended to use, in the name of its citizens, to sedate, paralyze, and stop the beating heart of an inmate were exempt from Nebraska's public record law. In December the Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to challenge the denial. Nebraska is just the latest state to decide the executioner's black hood of anonymity also covers the pharmacies that mix the deadly compounds used to kill p...

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, a...

Nebraska's corrections director faced blistering criticism Thursday for spending more than $54,000 on foreign-made lethal injection drugs the state hasn't received because the federal government says their import is illegal. Members of a legislative oversight committee grilled Nebraska Department of Correctional Services Director Scott Frakes over the purchase, saying he approved the prepayment without following typical procedures or taking steps to ensure the state could recover the money. Frakes' testimony during a wide-ranging hearing on the troubled state prison system offered new details about Nebraska's efforts to obtain execution drugs amid a nationwide shortage. The corrections director agreed to buy sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide from Chris Harris, a distributor in India who contacted him in April, as lawmakers were debating whether to abolish the death penalty. Both drugs are required in Nebraska's 3-drug lethal injection protocol...

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts: "An almost quixotic figure in his quest to kill" It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what someone does when they want to score illegal drugs. They search in the shadows for a source - an illicit dealer - and they operate in secrecy. God forbid they get caught. This is precisely the scenario playing out with the state governments of Nebraska, Arizona, Ohio and Texas. They're all desperately trying to import a drug called sodium thiopental to use for lethal injections in executions. However, it's against the law for the chemical to enter the country. Just recently came a report about the feds confiscating drugs headed for Texas and Arizona, while the governors of Ohio and Oklahoma delayed executions until the drug mess is sorted out. But Nebraska's new governor is a special case in point as he becomes an almost quixotic figure in his quest to kill. Gov. Pete Ricketts continues to insist that he is still ...

Gathering signatures against the Nebraska death penalty repeal Nebraska prison officials unsuccessfully tried to buy a key lethal injection drug from a Mississippi-based pharmaceutical company after spending months trying to import tens of thousands of dollars in execution drugs from India, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services ordered about $825 worth of pancuronium bromide last month from Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Plus, which replaced a firm that was dissolved in 2013 after it faced disciplinary action in other states. Documents obtained through an open records request show the order was placed Oct. 14, amid an ongoing challenge to lawmakers' decision to repeal the death penalty in Nebraska, which hasn't carried out an execution in 18 years. The four-box order was cancelled a day later, after the company said the product wasn't available. Nebraska had already spent $26,000 to buy 1,000 d...

Nebraska has hired Ben England, who also has been hired by other states, to help it import drugs for use in executions. In documents confirming his work for Nebraska, England also is listed as the U.S. agent for the drug salesman in India who has been the subject of ongoing BuzzFeed News reporting. States attempting to illegally import execution drugs, an outside lawyer helping them do so, and an overseas drug supplier have coordinated their efforts more than previously known, documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show. BuzzFeed News previously reported that three states — Arizona, Ohio, and Texas — hired outside lawyers to help them on drug importation issues. Several states have paid Ben England or his companies — Benjamin L. England & Associates, LLC and FDAImports.com, LLC — to represent the states in their attempts to import the drugs. New public records provided by Nebraska to BuzzFeed News show that it, too, has hired England to not only import sodium thiopenta...

States are locked in legal battle with the federal government after regulators intercepted illegally imported anesthetics to be used in lethal injections Death penalty states are locked in a legal battle with the federal government after regulators intercepted shipments of illegally imported anesthetics that were destined to be used in executions as part of lethal injection protocols. Documents released by the Arizona department of corrections as a result of a lawsuit led by the Guardian and joined by several Arizona news organizations reveal that the state’s department of corrections (DoC) was clearly warned by federal officials against illegally importing the drugs. Yet the documents in Guardian versus the DoC director Charles Ryan show that days later the state went ahead with importing the drugs regardless. On 13 July, the US Department of Justice wrote to the DoC and said that the state’s desire to import sodium thiopental – an anesthetic that is not approved for ...

This is Harris’s second listed business location, the location he tells the DEA and Nebraska that Harris Pharma is based out of. When states ran out of execution drugs, they started paying tens of thousands of dollars to Chris Harris, a salesman in India with no pharmaceutical background. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts had a problem. In a few days, the state legislature would vote on repealing the death penalty in his state. He needed to convince a few of them that the death penalty in Nebraska was salvageable, that the state’s prior problems with the death penalty were just logistical issues that he, a new governor, could fix. So, on May 14, he announced that he had found a way for Nebraska to get execution drugs — something that many states have struggled to find. “The functionality of the death penalty in Nebraska has been a management issue that I have promised to resolve,” Gov. Ricketts said, announcing the purchase a day before the legislature would vote to advance t...

A letter from the FDA warned the state that importing the drug would break the law. The state of Ohio planned to illegally import sodium thiopental, a drug used for executions, according to a Food and Drug Administration letter obtained by BuzzFeed through a Freedom of Information Act request. The June letter says that Ohio planned to "obtain bulk and finished dosage forms of sodium thiopental." Since the drug is not available in the US, wrote Domenic Veneziano, director of the FDA's import operation, "we assume this product would be purchased from an oversees source." Veneziano reminded Ohio Director of Rehabilitation and Correction Gary C. Mohr that "there is no FDA approved application for sodium thiopental, and it is illegal to import an unapproved new drug into the United States." According to BuzzFeed: The prison Ohio carries out executions in registered for a DEA license to import the drug last year for a "law enforce...

The expected arrival date of 2 drugs to be used in executions has come and gone - a month ago. But Nebraska Department of Correctional Services Director Scott Frakes said Monday he is still confident the state will get the sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide that are 2 of 3 drugs in Nebraska's lethal injection protocol. It is taking time to make sure the order is done right, he said. Frakes ordered the drugs - sodium thiopental makes an inmate unconscious and pancuronium bromide causes paralysis - in May from Harris Pharma, a company in India that has sold sodium thiopental to Nebraska in the past. The state already has the 3rd drug, potassium chloride, which stops the heart. In May, the department ordered 1,000 1-gram vials of sodium thiopental at a cost of $25 per vial and 1,000 ampules of 2 mg/2 ml of pancuronium bromide at $26 per ampule. Total cost was $54,000. The drugs are paid for and the supplier has the money, Frakes said Monday. "We...