Connecticut Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Prohibit the Production and Manufacturing of Lethal Injection Drugs and Other Materials for Executions

On January 10, 2025, three Connecticut law­mak­ers intro­duced a bill that would make it ille­gal to man­u­fac­ture and sell any drugs or med­ical devices in the state meant to car­ry out the death penal­ty. In 2024, Connecticut-based com­pa­ny Absolute Standards was iden­ti­fied as the source of lethal injec­tion drugs used in 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in 2020 and 2021. In a let­ter to the bill’s spon­sors, John Criscio, President of Absolute Standards, said the com­pa­ny ceased pro­duc­tion of pen­to­bar­bi­tal in December 2020 and does not intend ​“to resume any pro­duc­tion or sale” of the drug.

One of the bill’s co-spon­sors, Senator Ceci Maher told CT Insider that she ​“think[s] this is some­thing we need to do to make sure we here in Connecticut are liv­ing our val­ues, which is that we do not con­done the death penal­ty.” State House Majority Leader Jason Rojas expressed con­cern about the bill, not­ing, ​“I oppose the death penal­ty and wouldn’t be opposed to [ban­ning] the sale or man­u­fac­ture of lethal injec­tion drugs” but nev­er­the­less he wants to exam­ine the bill’s implications.

During the April 7, 2024, episode of ​“Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver focused on the use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal in fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. ​“Our fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have con­tin­ued to pur­sue ques­tion­ably legal and def­i­nite­ly hor­ri­fy­ing ways [of exe­cu­tion],” Mr. Oliver said. Calling the Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion accounts of 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions with pen­to­bar­bi­tal at the end of President Trump’s first term ​“san­i­tized,” Mr. Oliver not­ed autop­sies of two exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als revealed the pris­on­ers’ lungs were ​“twice as heavy as they should be, indi­cat­ing ​‘pul­monary ede­ma,’ where flu­id rush­es into the lungs and air­ways,” caus­ing a drown­ing or suf­fo­cat­ing sen­sa­tion with­out ade­quate anes­theti­za­tion. The U.S. Department of Justice is cur­rent­ly review­ing the appro­pri­ate­ness of using pen­to­bar­bi­tal in exe­cu­tions. Nashville-based fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er Kelley Henry, who is con­sid­er­ing a chal­lenge to Tennessee’s sin­gle drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal pro­to­col notes, ​“We know from the sci­en­tif­ic data that sin­gle drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal results in pul­monary ede­ma which has been likened to waterboarding[.]”

Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sub­mit­ted by jour­nal­ists on Mr. Oliver’s team for its April 2024 report, Last Week Tonight iden­ti­fied Absolute Standards as the firm that pro­vid­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with the pen­to­bar­bi­tal used in the 2020 – 2021 round of fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. The prob­lem, Mr. Oliver alleges, is that while Absolute Standards has been reg­is­tered with Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) since August 2018 to pro­duce pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the drugs pro­duced by the man­u­fac­tur­er are not autho­rized for human con­sump­tion. According to Mr. Oliver, ​“under the law, com­pa­nies that make drugs need to be reg­is­tered with the FDA, and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion claimed, before the exe­cu­tions, that its sup­pli­er was ​‘prop­er­ly reg­is­tered.’” An addi­tion­al FOIA request sub­mit­ted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed that the orga­ni­za­tion was ​“unable to locate and records respon­sive” to the request, and Absolute Standards ​“has not been inspect­ed by the FDA.”

For more than a decade, depart­ments of cor­rec­tions across the United States have had dif­fi­cul­ty acquir­ing some of the drugs tra­di­tion­al­ly used in lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. Many drug man­u­fac­tur­ers have explic­it­ly banned the use of their prod­ucts in exe­cu­tions and oth­ers have stopped pro­duc­ing these drugs com­plete­ly. More than a dozen states have also enact­ed State-by-State Execution Protocolssecre­cy statutes intend­ed to pro­tect drug sup­pli­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers from public scrutiny.