All this so states can continue to kill prisoners.
Hospira’s plea for states to stop using their product in executions may have fallen on deaf ears, but there could legal ramifications if states are acquiring FDA regulated drugs illegally. According to the Daily Beast, citing the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, “Oklahoma did not consult a DEA registrant in obtaining the drug from Arkansas and filed no paperwork recording the transaction,” as is required by Federal law.
California’s new batch of sodium thiopental expires in 2014. Hospira’s spokesman Dainel Rosenberg to the Arizona Republic, “The expiration dates for lots last manufactured by Hospira are for 2011. Therefore, product with an expiration date of 2014 cannot be Hospira product.” Since Hospira is the only FDA approved manufacturer of this drug, what is it that California has?
Arizona is scheduled to execute Jeffrey Landrigan on October 26, but is also concealing where or how it acquired the sodium thiopental it plans to us, telling the Arizona paper only “The Department has lawfully obtained the necessary chemicals under its current written protocol ( . . . ) in sufficient quantity for an execution.”
We have a right to know how our states are carrying out this most extreme act of punishment. Treating the acquisition of lethal injection drugs as if it were some big national security secret is not only suspicious. It is an insult to the public in whose name these states are zealously trying to kill people.