It would be funny, or at least ironic – if the matter wasn’t so serious. We can’t seem to get the drugs we need to kill people. At least not legally. The drugs are the illegal part, not the killing – these are meant for lethal injections of death row inmates.
The drugs in question are sodium thiopental and other short acting, injectable barbiturates. Part of the drug cocktail used to knock out and then kill during executions. There is no longer any US manufacturer for these substances and Nebraska (as well as other states) has been shopping overseas to get them. All forms are regulated as controlled substances by the DEA. So Nebraska is running afoul of the same federal laws that are used to bust any street dealer.
Of course, the context is different. No one is going to jail over illegal imports to the state (from India). Rather, the drugs obtained are tainted by the illegal chain of custody and can’t be used in executions. Either the state will have to adopt a new protocol that uses other drugs or find a new supplier and a way to have the drugs imported. Because the protocol is set in law and policy, the easiest road is to find another supply instead of trying to rewrite existing procedure. Whenever the drug cocktail is changed, a round of objections and lawsuits comes from the anti-death penalty lobby. The claim is cruel and unusual punishment – the state is then left to prove the new death-mix is humane.
The current hullabaloo came by way of a defense attorney questioning the qualtity of the drug that would be used to execute his client. Overseas manufacturing standards are not necessarily up to US quality, so this was an issue. There might be some merit to the objection, besides being a way to stay a scheduled execution – this class of drugs is unstable. Shipping from a hot climate and unsupervised storage may actually have degraded the drug. Because of the set-in-stone protocol, you can’t just give more to make up any lack.
