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| Missouri switches to new lethal injection drug |
| By stltoday.com- Jeremy Kohler |
| Published: 10/24/2013 |
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Missouri’s effort to mete out capital punishment continued to evolve Tuesday with a plan to carry out executions with a drug commonly used to euthanize pets. The Missouri Department of Corrections announced a plan to use lethal injections of the sedative pentobarbital after Gov. Jay Nixon postponed an execution over concerns about using a common hospital anesthetic drug, propofol. The department said in a news release that it would use a compounding pharmacy to produce pentobarbital. By obtaining the drug that way, the state can sidestep large drug manufacturers, which are trying to prevent its use in capital punishment. Thirteen other states have used the drug for executions, but only Texas and Ohio are using compounding pharmacies, which make custom drugs in small batches. No further information was provided about the pharmacy, which the state designated as part of its execution team. On Oct. 11, Gov. Jay Nixon postponed the execution of murderer Allen Nicklasson, punishment that had been scheduled for today, because of concerns about the state’s plan to use propofol. The European Union, which is against the death penalty and supplies most of the propofol used in the U.S., had threatened to cut off that supply if the execution went forward, which could have had a widespread impact on hospitals. The postponement of Nicklasson’s execution came days after the Department of Corrections said it would return to a supplier some of the propofol it had planned to use for executions. The supplier of the drug, Morris & Dickson of Shreveport, La., had pleaded with the state nearly a year ago to return 20 vials it had shipped to Missouri in violation of its agreement with the manufacturer, Fresenius Kabi of Germany, not to provide the drug for capital punishment. Read More. |
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