Will Lethal Injections Stop Due to Lack of Sodium Thiopental?

The only American manufacturer of a drug widely used in lethal injections for prisoners on death row recently announced it will stop producing sodium thiopental.



Since 1982 the method of execution in Texas has been lethal injection, consisting of three drugs administered in lethal doses.
The first prevents pain...its followed by a muscle relaxer, then a drug that stops the heart.



"One of those drugs is sodium thiopental and that is the drug that was recently announced that would not be manufactured any longer," Michelle Lyons, the public information officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
Hospira Inc. temporarily halted production last year, and planned to start again this winter at a plant in Italy, but Italian authorities are not allowing exportation of the drug for the use of capital punishment.
Lyons said, "We do currently have enough sodium thiopental on hand to carry out the two executions that have been scheduled for the month of February."


The anesthetic is used by 34 of the 35 states that use lethal injection to carry out the death penalty.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or TDCJ, carries out more executions than any other state.
"We'll certainly be looking at the drugs that other states have used successfully in their process," Lyons said.
District courts set execution dates across the state.

The TDCJ still has two more executions this year, but their supply of the drug expires in March.
Lyons said, "We have an execution scheduled in May, so we will make every attempt to have another drug in place so we can carry out that execution as we've been ordered."


If time runs out before they can find an alternative, those execution dates will be pushed back.
17 Death Row inmates were executed last year in 2010.

The Huntsville Unit is the only place in Texas where executions can take place, and only by lethal injection.


Alex Villarreal