Kentucky turns supply of sodium thiopental to DEA - AP

Ky. hands over its lethal injection drug to DEA AP

Kentucky has turned over its supply of a key lethal injection drug to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Kentucky Justice Department spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin said in a statement Friday that the state turned over its supply of sodium thiopental to be used as evidence in a case in another jurisdiction.

The drug has been in short supply since its primary manufacturer in the United States, Hospira Inc., stopped making the drug earlier this year.

Sodium thiopental is a fast-acting sedative that is typically the first drug used when putting inmates to death.

 

Update 4:41pm   Tennessee also turns over drug supply 

Temporary Ban on Executions in Kentucky Upheld

Judge's temporary execution ban upheld — Associated Press

Link to the order

The court, voting 5-2, left in place a lower court's order temporarily barring executions while Gregory L. Wilson, 54, and other Death Row inmates challenge the state's execution protocol.

The decision means Kentucky won't be able to carry out an execution, despite having recently purchased enough of a key drug for three lethal injections.

Kentucky's purchase of sodium thiopental challenged as violating injunction - AP story

Lawyer seeks to stop Ky. from using execution drug - AP

Kentucky appears to have violated a judge's order stopping all executions and preventing the state from taking any action to carry out a lethal injection by purchasing a key drug used in the process, an attorney for several death row inmates said Thursday.

Public defender David Barron wants to bar the state from ever using the 18 grams of sodium thiopental the state acquired this month

Update on Kentucky and the search for sodium thiopental - Lexington Herald-Leader

Kentucky executions could be delayed months, official says

If Kentucky is to continue executing Death Row inmates, it must find a new source of a drug used in lethal injections or revise the rules to substitute another drug.

The state has lost its supplier of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic used in executions.

Changing the mix of drugs used in an execution would require revising state regulations, a process that would take time and open the door for challenges by defense attorneys and anti-death penalty advocates.

The changes and challenges could take much of the year to resolve, said the Rev. Pat Delahanty, chairman of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

"I don't think there'll be executions in 2011" in Kentucky, Delahanty said.

Hospira, a Lake Forest, Ill., company, announced last week it would not resume production of sodium thiopental.


Read more

Kentucky unable to acquire lethal injection drug

Companies won't sell Kentucky lethal injection drug

by Brett Barrouquere AP

Amid a nationwide shortage of a lethal injection drug, documents obtained under a freedom of information request show two pharmaceutical companies declined to sell Kentucky a supply of the sedative.

The state e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show one firm, KRS Global Biotechnology of Boca Raton, Fla., explained it's refusal by saying there was no doctor involved in the purchase of sodium thiopental, even though Kentucky law bars physicians from being involved in administering executions.

No reason was given in the e-mail traffic between state officials and pharmacists for a canceled order from the other company, Spectrum Chemical and Laboratory Products of Gardenia, Calif. A Spectrum official told the AP the ordered was scrapped when it sold that part of its business last year.