Seems Tennessee can’t find a supplier for its lethal injection executions using a three drug cocktail that includes sodium thiopental (guess they haven’t called Besse Medical), so pentobarbital is apparently being considered as a substitute. 

According to its state website, Tennessee has a long execution history, with hanging and the electric chair as…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) became the defendant in a civil suit filed this week by six Death Row inmates who face execution in Arizona (3 plaintiffs), California (2 plaintiffs), and Tennessee (1 plaintiff) as they seek a declaratory judgment from the federal judge presiding over the United States District Court for the District…

On Tuesday, we learned the Associated Press had used the power of the press last week to discover that Besse Medical had been the supplier of sodium thiopental to Texas for use in its executions.  Good work, AP. 

The State of Texas fought to keep the identity of its new supplier secret – purportedly to protect the…

On January 21, 2011, via its website, Illinois drug manufacturer Hospira, Inc. fired a shot heard ’round the world as it announced in a short and sweet press release that it would no longer be making sodium thiopental (product name, Pentothal™).  According to Hospira:

Hospira had intended to produce Pentothal at its Italian plant. … [W]e cannot

…

Last week, John David Duty was executed by the State of Oklahoma and in doing so, Mr. Duty made the history books – we may all remember his name for many years in the future as the first man to be executed in the same way that vets put down beloved pets.  

Because, while other…

Okay, we’re aware that there is a national shortage of  thiopental sodium, one of the three drugs legally okayed to be used in execution by lethal injection.  The result has been delaying some executions.  In at least one instance, an execution kept to the calendar as the needed drug was purchased from an overseas…

Two nights ago (on Tuesday), Arizona executed Jeffrey Landrigan by lethal injection after the United States Supreme Court (5-4) okayed going forward, even though there is a national shortage of sodium thiopental, one of the three drugs used in the lethal injection "cocktail" that is used to kill the condemned man. 

Sodium thiopental works as an…

Sodium thiopental is a critical component of the three-drug cocktail that makes up the lethal injection procedure for most executions in this country.  It’s the drug that makes the person lose consciousness, before the other two drugs first cause paralysis and then stop the heart.  (We’ve posted about the procedure in detail here.)…