Many states are seek­ing alter­na­tive ways to car­ry out exe­cu­tions by lethal injec­tion. Missouri announced it intends to use the anes­thet­ic propo­fol, though no oth­er state has used this drug and the drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er has strong­ly object­ed to such use. Officials in Texas and Ohio announced they will be chang­ing their exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols in the near future because their cur­rent exe­cu­tion drug (pen­to­bar­bi­tal) is expir­ing and is no longer avail­able for this use. In June, offi­cials in California announced it would aban­don its three-drug exe­cu­tion method and devel­op a new process. Georgia appar­ent­ly obtained drugs out­side the state, but has passed a law mak­ing all infor­ma­tion about exe­cu­tions a ​“state secret.” Deborah Denno, a pro­fes­sor at Fordham Law School and an expert on meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, not­ed the prob­lems states face, ​“The bot­tom line is no mat­ter what drugs they come up with, despite every avenue these states have pur­sued, every drug they have inves­ti­gat­ed has met a dead end. This affects every sin­gle exe­cu­tion in the coun­try. It just stalls every­thing, stalls the process.”

Kent Scheidegger, legal direc­tor of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, dis­put­ed there being a major issue because exist­ing exe­cu­tion drugs are used on ani­mals: ​“It’s an arti­fi­cial­ly cre­at­ed prob­lem,” he said. ​“There is no dif­fi­cul­ty in using a seda­tive such as pen­to­bar­bi­tal. It’s done every day in ani­mal shel­ters through­out the country.”

(R. Lyman, ​“Death Row Improvises, Lacking Lethal Mix,” New York Times, August 18, 2013). All lethal injec­tions in the coun­try over the past two years have used pen­to­bar­bi­tal. See Lethal Injection and Executions.

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