Prisoners facing execution in Arizona may now opt to supply one of several drugs for their own lethal injection. The choice is being given by the Arizona Board of Corrections, which lists Sodium Pentothal, an anesthetic, a pentobarbital or a sedative as options permissible for submission by families and the defense attorneys of death row inmates. The policy, which requires that the drugs come from a "certified or licensed pharmacist, pharmacy, compound pharmacy, manufacturer, or supplier," is facing push back from critics, with some questioning how unlicensed members of the general public might possibly get their hands on the drugs.
"[The idea is] unprecedented, wholly novel and frankly absurd. A prisoner or a prisoner’s lawyer simply cannot obtain these drugs legally, or legally transfer them to the department of corrections" says lethal injection expert at the University of California Berkeley Megan McCracken. "[S]o it’s hard to fathom what the Arizona department was thinking in including this nonsensical provision as part of its execution protocol.”
States that institute death by lethal injection have faced a host of obstacles to carrying out the procedure with integrity, and that has caused it to become subjected to mounting pressure from death penalty abolitionists. Just last week House Republicans in Mississippi pushed to pass a bill that would bring the gas chamber and firing squad to their state, as a substitution for lethal injection, as they anticipate the procedure may soon be outlawed in the state.
The main problem faced by prisons implementing the method is the increasing difficulty they've experienced in acquiring the proper drugs. Many producers in the pharmaceutical industry who could supply a cocktail that will execute inmates in a fashion not deemed cruel and unusual are refusing to sell the drugs to states that might use them for the death penalty. European labs that produce pentobarbital and sodium thiopental, for example, will not ship them to the U.S. in protest of the legality of the death penalty. The dilemma has forced states like Arizona to use alternative drugs, which on occasion have backfired and lead to the bevy of botched executions that anti-death penalty advocates are using to fight its legality in court.
Source: complex.com
