Lethal Injection

Overview 

All death penal­ty states, the mil­i­tary, and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment autho­rize lethal injec­tion as a method of exe­cu­tion. Jurisdictions use a vari­ety of exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols using one or more drugs. Most three-drug pro­to­cols use an anes­thet­ic or seda­tive, fol­lowed by a drug to par­a­lyze the pris­on­er, and final­ly a drug to stop the heart. One and two-drug pro­to­cols typ­i­cal­ly use an over­dose of an anes­thet­ic or seda­tive, such as pen­to­bar­bi­tal, to cause death.

Although the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tion has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court, many of the spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions are being legal­ly chal­lenged. Because it is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to obtain legal­ly the drugs com­mon­ly used in exe­cu­tions, some states have exper­i­ment­ed with new drugs and dif­fer­ent drug com­bi­na­tions to car­ry out exe­cu­tions, result­ing in pro­longed exe­cu­tions in which pris­on­ers exhib­it­ed symp­toms of pain and dis­tress. The dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing drugs for lethal injec­tion has also dri­ven up the costs. 

Even though the issues sur­round­ing lethal injec­tion are far from set­tled, some states have attempt­ed to cut off debate by con­ceal­ing their exe­cu­tion prac­tices under veils of secre­cy. Laws passed over the past decade explic­it­ly pre­vent the pub­lic from learn­ing the prove­nance of lethal drugs, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to assess their reli­a­bil­i­ty and efficacy.

DPI has com­piled sum­maries of avail­able infor­ma­tion regard­ing the meth­ods of exe­cu­tion cur­rent­ly autho­rized and the drugs used in exe­cu­tions over the past ten years. DPI’s report, Behind the Curtain cov­ers the exe­cu­tion secre­cy laws that have been imposed in many states. Statements from var­i­ous phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies bar­ring the use of their drugs in exe­cu­tions are also provided.