Earlier this year, Nebraska was stopped by the FDA from receiving $54,400-worth of drugs from an Indian pharmaceutical distributor. Lethal injection drugs are scarce.
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The BuzzFeed report, based on documents obtained by the news service, said the FDA has consistently maintained that importation of the execution drug is illegal. Ohio is looking overseas for lethal injection drugs as well. When the drugs arrived via British Airways at the Phoenix global Airport in July, they were seized by federal officials and have not been released, according to the documents.
Arizona and other death penalty states have been struggling to obtain legal execution drugs for several years after European companies refused to sell the drugs, including sodium thiopental, that have been used to carry out executions.
Arizona has said “it doesn’t plan on seeking death warrants for inmates until it resolves a lawsuit originally filed by Wood and other death row inmates seeking information about the drugs used in executions”, according to the Associated Press report.
In that ongoing litigation, Texas officials recently claimed that they lacked the ability to provide the “master formulation record”, or recipe, used to compound the pentobarbital that state has used in its recent execution.
McGuire was executed in January 2014 by a two-drug mixture that had never been used before. “I’ve heard everything from using heroin to using nitrogen to going back to the electric chair”, Faber continued.
Ohio lawmakers so far haven’t taken any steps to move away from lethal injection other than set up a committee to study the issue.
On Thursday, Florida inmate Wayne Doty, who has been on death row since 2011, asked that he be executed using the electric chair and not by lethal injection.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Ohio is delaying executions until at least 2017 while prison officials try to secure supplies of hard-to-obtain lethal injection drugs, officials said. Lethal injection is the only legal method of execution in Ohio.
Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman said while many state lawmakers talk big about the need to put heinous criminals to death, they’ve done an inadequate job of turning such feelings into workable policies.
“I think the General Assembly is rightly to be faulted for leaving us in this kind of state of limbo”, Berman said.
So the state could use it to kill guys. Phillips’ execution was rescheduled for January 12, 2017.
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“We showed past year in December that we’re willing to do what they reasonably request in order to facilitate the administration of the death penalty”, said Seitz, referring to the execution secrecy law that legislators passed. Even a few supporters of capital punishment criticized that execution, saying it amounted to torture.
