States Suddenly Acquiring Lethal Injection Drug from Unknown Source

Lawyers for Jeffrey Landrigan, an Arizona death row inmate sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on October 26, have filed a motion ask­ing courts to com­pel the state to reveal its source of a drug to be used in his lethal injec­tion. Despite a nation­wide short­age of sodi­um thiopen­tal, Arizona recent­ly announced that it has obtained new sup­plies of the drug. The announce­ment came the same day that California filed a notice in fed­er­al court that it had obtained the same drug with an expi­ra­tion date of 2014. Hospira Inc., the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of the drug, said it can­not be the man­u­fac­tur­er of the drug because the last batch the com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tured expires in 2011 and it will be unable to pro­duce any more of the drug until ear­ly 2011. Both the Arizona and California Departments of Corrections have declined to reveal the source of their new sup­ply. The FDA says that because of Hospira’s short­age, there are cur­rent­ly ​“no FDA-approved man­u­fac­tur­ers for [sodi­um] thiopen­tal,” and the agency is not aware of any sup­pli­er cur­rent­ly able to sup­ply the drug to the U.S. It is pos­si­ble the drug was obtained from China or India where com­pa­nies that man­u­fac­ture the drug exist.

Oklahoma, where Donald Wackerly was recent­ly exe­cut­ed using a dose of sodi­um thiopen­tal sup­plied by Arkansas, is also fac­ing inquiry into the legal­i­ty of how it acquired its sup­ply. Federal law requires that trans­fer of a Schedule III con­trolled sub­stance must take place between two Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reg­is­trants and that a record of the trans­ac­tion must be kept for two years. According to an offi­cial in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, the state did not con­sult a DEA reg­is­trant in obtain­ing the drug from Arkansas and did not file paper­work regard­ing the trans­ac­tion. Sylvia Lett, a Federal Public Defender in Arizona, said, ​“The refusal to pro­vide infor­ma­tion or solid­ly com­mit to its pro­to­col gives the appear­ance that the State is hid­ing some­thing. Why is the State being so secre­tive when the Arizona Department of Corrections is about to car­ry out the most severe sanc­tion allowed by law?”

(B. Crair, ​“A Death Penalty Serum Mystery,” The Daily Beast, October 14, 2010; M. Kiefer, ​“Arizona death row inmate’s lawyers want drug info from state,” Arizona Republic, October 14, 2010). See Lethal Injection.