The executioners' lament

States with the death penalty can no longer get a drug used in lethal injections. So they're improvising.

Death penalty
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File))

Why is there a crisis?

Stockpiles of a drug traditionally used in executions effectively ran out this fall. The 32 death-penalty states had been struggling to maintain supplies since 2011, when the sole American manufacturer of the anesthetic sodium thiopental announced it was ending production under pressure from the government in Italy, where its plant is based. Other European manufacturers also refused to provide the drug because of a European Union statute prohibiting the export of any product that might be used in capital punishment — especially since there's evidence that lethal injections sometimes cause agonizing deaths. Now, with hundreds waiting on death row, corrections departments have started desperately trying untested alternatives. "We don't know how these drugs are going to react because they've never been used to kill someone," says Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who studies lethal injections.

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Frances Weaver is a senior editor at The Week magazine. Originally from the U.K., she has written for the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and Standpoint magazine.