When the sole U.S. sup­pli­er of a drug used by all death penal­ty states announced it was halt­ing pro­duc­tion ear­li­er this year, many states turned to sources over­seas. In par­tic­u­lar, Nebraska obtained a large quan­ti­ty of the drug – sodi­um thiopen­tal – from a com­pa­ny in Mumbai, India. Now that com­pa­ny has announced it will no longer sup­ply the drug for use in lethal injec­tions. In a state­ment released to the media, Kayem Pharmaceutical Pvt. Ltd. said, ​“In view of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty involved with sale of our thiopen­tal sodi­um to var­i­ous jails/​prisons in USA and as alleged to be used for the pur­pose of lethal injec­tion, we vol­un­tary declare that we as Indian Pharma Dealer who cher­ish the Ethos of Hinduism (A believ­er even in non-liv­ings as the cre­ation of God) refrain our­selves in sell­ing this drug where the pur­pose is pure­ly for Lethal Injection and its mis­use.” Earlier this year, the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of the same drug, Hospira Inc., sim­i­lar­ly announced that it want­ed no part in sup­ply­ing drugs for exe­cu­tions. Nebraska death row inmate Carey Moore is chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of the state’s pur­chase of the drug. According to a motion filed with the Nebraska Supreme Court, there is no evi­dence that Kayem Pharmaceutical is reg­is­tered with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or is autho­rized to deliv­er drugs to the U.S. There is also evi­dence that Nebraska received a gener­ic form of the drug, con­trary to the state’s execution protocol.

South Dakota may also have obtained drugs from Kayem, and the com­pa­ny has been con­tact­ed by 13 oth­er states with sim­i­lar inter­ests. Drugs obtained by Georgia that appar­ent­ly orig­i­nat­ed over­seas were recent­ly seized by the DEA. Kentucky and Tennessee have turned over some of their lethal injec­tion drugs to the DEA as well.

(K. O’Hanlon, ​“Company says it no longer will sell drug for lethal injec­tion,” Nebraska Journal Star; see also R. Bonner, ​“Indian Company Ends Sale of Lethal-Injection Drug to the U.S.,” The Atlantic, both April 7, 2011). See Lethal Injection.

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