The supply of a key drug, sodium thiopental, used in lethal injections have many state officials knocking on Texas State Penitentary's door for help. Sodium thiopental is the knockout drug used in letal injection executions and some of the states that have the death penalty are runnuing out or have none left. Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, stated that she would not identify the stares that requested assistance. The state has declined to make its supply available although, its 39 doses are set to expire in March and it only has 3 scheduled executions before then. States such as Arizona, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky have scrambled to acquire the drug.
Sodium thiopental renders the condemned inmate unconscious, so the prisoner feels no pain while the rest of the lethal cocktail is administered. Hospira, the lone federally approved maker of rthe drug, has said that new batches of the drug won't b available until next year. Lyons stated that despite looming expiration of the state's inventory of the drug she has no plans to distribute the drug to other states in need, " We have a responsibility to ensure we have an adequate supply of the drug on hand to carry out any executions scheduled in the State of Texas." States with a shortage are having to find other means to obtaining the drug by finding overseas suppliers or proposing radical changes in their execution protocols.
In Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, had to stay the executions of two men in August because of the lack of sodium thiopental. In Oklahoma a federal judge aproved the use of pentobarbital, a drug used in euthinizing animals, to replace sodium thiopental in executions. In Arizona the state had to get the drug from a British supplier, so that it was able to executeJeffrey Landrigan, a convicted murderer. As you can see other states have had to find other means of acquiring the drug or add stays of executions to condemned inmates costing taxpayers more money their states while these men await their executions. I know that to many people that the death penalty is a hot button issue. My question to you is that do you think that states who do not have an adequate supply of the drug should do away with the death penalty altogether? What is your opinion on this hot button issue?
http//:usatoday.com/2010/11/29/kevin_johnson/pg2A
I think that if they have the death penalty in that state then they should stick with it and get what they need from somewhere overseas or wherever they need to if they don't have the supply. That being said I don't think it would be fair to have the death penalty for one who did wrong and not for another who did the same thing.
ReplyDelete