Arizona accused of importing illegal execution drug

A shipment of an illegally imported lethal injection drug bought by the state of Arizona has been stopped at Phoenix airport, according to documents.

One of those drugs, sodium thiopental, is no longer manufactured by FDA-approved companies and the other, pentobarbital, has been put off limits for executions by drug makers.

DOC spokesman Andrew Wilder said the state is contesting the FDA’s authority to withhold the drug. This is partly due to controversy over botched executions, including that of Arizona death row inmate Joseph Wood.

Texas and other states have been scrambling for several years to obtain sodium thiopental and other drugs used in executions, after US manufacturers stopped making them and European suppliers blocked their importation because of opposition in their home countries to the death penalty. Presumably, the states trying to import it meant to use it as the first drug – the sedative step – in their three-drug protocol for administering lethal injection.

Earlier this year, Nebraska unsuccessfully tried to import its execution drug from overseas.

On Thursday, Texas said it had obtained a licence from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to import sodium thiopental. The representative for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that the source of the drugs ordered is confidential.

There’s no shortage of the two lethal-injection drugs Ohio is looking to use – either pentobarbital or sodium thiopental.

Another option for Ohio is to keep lethal injection but find different drugs to use.

Wood, convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her father, snorted repeatedly throughout the 90 minutes it took for him to die. Authorities later revealed that he was given 15 doses of midazolam and a painkiller.

Nebraska-prior to abolishing the death penalty in May of this year-spent $54,400 on a shipment of lethal injection drugs from an Indian drug distributor.

Gov. John Kasich has issued warrants of reprieve allowing the execution dates for 11 inmates scheduled to die next year and one scheduled for early 2017 to be pushed into ensuing years.

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said in a statement the new dates are needed to give the prisons agency extra time to get the drugs.

Jon Paul Rion represents the family of executed inmate Dennis McGuire in their lawsuit against the state. The Arizona Republic reported that the Arizona Corrections Department contracted to purchase 1,000 vials of the drug as well.

Earlier this year, the state of Florida temporarily suspended its planned executions while suits asserting the unconstitutionality of lethal injection – including the hearing of the Glossip case before the Supreme Court – work their way through the court system.

A few states have adopted backup methods, such as Utah, which added the firing squad, Tennessee with the electric chair and Oklahoma with nitrogen gas.