Arizona’s Handling of Lethal Injection Drugs Raises Transparency and Viability Concerns

According to inves­tiga­tive report­ing from the AZ Mirror, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, & Reentry (ADCRR) is stor­ing the state’s sup­ply of pen­to­bar­bi­tal salt, the active ingre­di­ent used in a com­pound­ed form in lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions, in eight unmarked glass con­tain­ers in a prison refrig­er­a­tor, rais­ing doubts about the drugs’ authen­tic­i­ty and effi­ca­cy. ADCRR has refused to reveal how long it has been in pos­ses­sion of these jars, cit­ing state statutes that for­bid reveal­ing ​“the source of the exe­cu­tion chem­i­cals.” Arizona’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, revised in October 2024, states that “[i]f the chemical’s expi­ra­tion or beyond-use date states only a month and year (e.g., ​“June 2017”), then ADCRR will not use that chem­i­cal after the last day of the month spec­i­fied.” More than a dozen states, includ­ing Arizona, have passed secre­cy statutes that pre­vent the pub­lic from under­stand­ing how their tax dol­lars are being used to accom­plish exe­cu­tions. These laws make it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to assess the reli­a­bil­i­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ers or the effi­ca­cy of the drugs, and release state offi­cials from answer­ing ques­tions about the pro­to­col, all of which increase the chances of a ​“botched” exe­cu­tion.

An invoice from ADCRR records indi­cates that the drugs in its pos­ses­sion were pur­chased in October 2020, under the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion, and were used in three botched exe­cu­tions in 2022. Legal experts have raised con­cerns about the via­bil­i­ty of these drugs and whether they have expired. ​“I’m flab­ber­gast­ed that a med­ical doc­tor would draw any­thing from an unmarked con­tain­er and put it into peo­ple,” said retired Federal Magistrate David Duncan, who Governor Katie Hobbs appoint­ed to review the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col in 2023. In November 2024, Gov. Hobbs fired Judge Duncan before he fin­ished his review. Judge Duncan report­ed being told by ADCRR per­son­nel that the pen­to­bar­bi­tal salt does not have an expi­ra­tion date. This direct­ly con­tra­dicts what oth­ers have been told. Federal defend­er Kelley Henry says that offi­cials at Absolute Standards, a com­pa­ny that has acknowl­edged man­u­fac­tur­ing pen­to­bar­bi­tal, told her that pen­to­bar­bi­tal salt is unsta­ble, should be refrig­er­at­ed, and has a shelf life of just two and half years. If that is true, pen­to­bar­bi­tal salt pur­chased in October 2020 would no longer be viable for use.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) analy­sis of pen­to­bar­bi­tal use in fed­er­al exe­cu­tions released in the last week of the Biden Administration describes pen­to­bar­bi­tal as ​“a bar­bi­tu­rate drug” that the FDA has approved for use in humans for seizures, insom­nia, or as an anes­thet­ic for surgery, but not ​“for the pur­pose of caus­ing death.” For more than a decade, depart­ments of cor­rec­tion across the U.S. have report­ed dif­fi­cul­ty acquir­ing many of the drugs tra­di­tion­al­ly used in lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. Many drug man­u­fac­tur­ers have pro­hib­it­ed sell­ing their prod­ucts for use in exe­cu­tions and oth­ers have stopped pro­duc­ing these drugs all togeth­er. This has forced some states to pur­chase pow­dered active phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ingre­di­ent pen­to­bar­bi­tal in bulk and then use com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies to cre­ate an injectable solu­tion. The DOJ report notes that these “[c]ompounded drugs are not FDA approved, which means the agency does not ver­i­fy their safe­ty, effec­tive­ness or qual­i­ty before they are marketed.”

An Executive Order signed on President Trump’s first day in office calls on the Attorney General to ​“take all nec­es­sary and law­ful action to ensure that each state that allows cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has a suf­fi­cient sup­ply of drugs need­ed to car­ry out lethal injection.”