Recent editorials in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times called into question the current use of lethal injection in executions, in light of the decision by the sole U.S. manufacturer of a key drug used by almost all states to stop its production. Hospira Inc. was the only U.S. producer of sodium thiopental, the main anesthetic used in lethal injections, but the company said international concerns about the death penalty prompted its halt. The shortage of the drug caused some states to seek it overseas. The New York Times cited a litany of problems with the batches of the drug used in recent executions in Arizona and Georgia. “Even with judicial blessing, the conduct of executions in this country is a shambles. In Arizona and Georgia, the sodium thiopental used in executions has possibly been ineffective and almost certainly been illegal. It came from Dream Pharma, an unlicensed British supplier, run from a driving school. The batches carried a date of 2006. They were likely made by a company in Austria that went out of business. The drug is said to be effective for only a year. As a foreign-made drug without approval by the Food and Drug Administration, it is prohibited by federal statute.” In a similar editorial, the Los Angeles Times noted, “If this were just a supply problem, it might be comparatively easy to solve. But lethal injection, considered the most ‘humane’ way to execute criminals, comes with a host of other ethical, regulatory and legal challenges. Medical associations refuse to condone physician participation in executions, increasing the danger of botched procedures. The Food and Drug Administration wants nothing to do with lethal-injection drugs, refusing to verify the effectiveness of imports but allowing states to purchase them. Thus there is no way of knowing whether the drugs are producing the ‘painless’ death they promise, or a torturous death forbidden by the Constitution.” Read the full editorials below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/opinion/28fri3.html
New York Times, January 28, 2011
Lethal Injection and the F.D.A.
Capital punishment means lethal injection. The administration of a barbiturate as part of a fatal dose of drugs is meant to render a convict unconscious before other drugs stop his or her breathing and heart so the execution can somehow be construed by a judge as being neither cruel nor unusual.
Sodium thiopental is at the heart of this story. A fast- and short-acting general anesthetic, it has been used to put convicts under and make executions methodical. For more than a year, however, a shortage of the drug has widened the gap between the reality of carrying out executions and support for them in American law. In October, a majority of the Supreme Court wrongly insisted there was no evidence that the shortage had any bearing on whether an execution can be done constitutionally. Now the evidence is impossible to ignore.
We strongly oppose capital punishment on many grounds. Even with judicial blessing, the conduct of executions in this country is a shambles. In Arizona and Georgia, the sodium thiopental used in executions has possibly been ineffective and almost certainly been illegal. It came from Dream Pharma, an unlicensed British supplier, run from a driving school. The batches carried a date of 2006. They were likely made by a company in Austria that went out of business. The drug is said to be effective for only a year. As a foreign-made drug without approval by the Food and Drug Administration, it is prohibited by federal statute.
The F.D.A. initially suspected the drug from Dream Pharma of being adulterated or mislabeled and refused to let it be imported. Then it let the drug enter the country — but with the warning that the agency hadn’t reviewed the drug’s “identity, safety, effectiveness, purity or any other characteristics.”
This month, the F.D.A. stated: “Reviewing substances imported or used for the purpose of state-authorized lethal injection clearly falls outside of F.D.A.’s explicit public health role.”
In the meantime, the only American manufacturer of sodium thiopental — formerly described as F.D.A.-approved — has announced it will no longer make the drug. It planned to produce the drug in Italy, but the Italian government has said it won’t permit the drug’s export for use in executions.
When it reaffirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment three years ago, a splintered Supreme Court said it believed lethal injection carried neither “substantial” nor “objectively intolerable” risk of inflicting serious harm. How can the justices be confident in that conclusion now?
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Editorial
Demise of a death drug
States need sodium thiopental to perform lethal injections, but it’s in short supply. Now what?
Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2011
In response to violations of international human rights norms, Western governments are slapping sanctions on a rogue regime by halting exports of a deadly substance. That’s nothing new; what is new is that the rogue nation is the United States.
The substance in question is sodium thiopental, a fast-acting anesthetic designed for surgery that has been put to a more sinister purpose in 34 states, which use it to numb condemned prison inmates before injecting another drug that stops their breathing and a third that stops their hearts. Sodium thiopental is very hard to come by because the only U.S. company that makes it has ceased production. Hospira Inc., unable to make the drug in the U.S., had hoped to manufacture it at a plant in Italy, but authorities there demanded assurances that it wouldn’t be used for capital punishment. Unable to provide them, Hospira opted to get out of the business. Britain has banned exports of the drug to the U.S.
The United States is an extreme rarity among industrialized democracies for its embrace of the death penalty, which has been abolished in law or practice by 139 nations. That’s why European countries are teaming up to stop exports of execution drugs to the U.S. — and that’s throwing a wrench into the American machinery of death. Without a supply of sodium thiopental, many states will have to go through the lengthy process of revising their execution procedures. Executions have been delayed for five years in California amid lawsuits over whether the state’s lethal injection method — which uses sodium thiopental — constitutes unconstitutionally cruel punishment. The state has an ample supply of the drug because it acquired 90 doses from Britain before London imposed its ban, but when that cache expires, the whole legal nightmare might start over.
If this were just a supply problem, it might be comparatively easy to solve. But lethal injection, considered the most “humane” way to execute criminals, comes with a host of other ethical, regulatory and legal challenges. Medical associations refuse to condone physician participation in executions, increasing the danger of botched procedures. The Food and Drug Administration wants nothing to do with lethal-injection drugs, refusing to verify the effectiveness of imports but allowing states to purchase them. Thus there is no way of knowing whether the drugs are producing the “painless” death they promise, or a torturous death forbidden by the Constitution.
Our biggest objection to the death penalty has nothing to do with death drugs. In an excellent but still imperfect legal system, it is impossible to determine guilt with 100% certainty, which is why dozens of death row inmates have been exonerated. Once a convict is dead, it’s too late to set him or her free if new evidence materializes. Add to this the expense of the never-ending appeals process and the serious questions about execution methodology raised by the sodium thiopental fracas, and we have to ask: Is the visceral satisfaction Americans derive from killing convicted killers really worth its cost?
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