The U.S. is facing a shortage of a drug widely used for lethal injections. With few options, states are turning to new drugs and compounding pharmacies, rather than overseas companies.

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North Carolina

In the latest move to resume executions in North Carolina, Secretary of Public Safety Frank Perry has approved a single-drug protocol for carrying out lethal injections.

On Oct. 24, Perry signed a 20-page execution protocol using a single drug, pentobarbital, a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals.

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Florida

It was the second time a new mix of drugs was used in Florida since the previous execution in mid-October.

Kimbrough was not a plaintiff in a lawsuit by other inmates who have argued the use of the new drug mix should be halted as unconstitutional. The execution Tuesday appeared to go smoothly, with no apparent movements or unusual activity by Kimbrough.

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It doesn't signal the end of the death penalty, says Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, but it does reveal a new front in the long-running battle.

"Everybody uses specific issues about lethal injections to have a conversation about how they feel about putting people to death," Zimring says. "In that sense, even though you think you're having a conversation about drugs and means, you're really having a conversation about ends and hostility to state execution."

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Missouri

“The courts at this point have given Missouri a green light to proceed with executions that are scheduled,” said Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “And barring either specific appeals related to some of the planned executions that may deal with issues unrelated to the execution protocol or courts revisiting the issue of the execution protocol that is now being used, basically there’s a green light and the door is open, and I anticipate more executions.”

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Florida

The findings of fact in this DP Protocol litigation are profoundly in the State's favor:

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Tennessee

Officials here, believing they are free of the latest round of challenges to Tennessee's death penalty, recently asked the state Supreme Court for execution dates for 10 death row inmates.


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California

A coalition of local law enforcement members met Thursday to discuss backing changes to California’s death penalty process, from streamlining appeals to finding an acceptable execution method.

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Missouri

Attorney Jennifer Herndon, who represents Nicklasson, claims in her motion in U.S. District Court that the state's death penalty protocol is "fatally flawed in both substance and procedure" and that because of the source of the pentobarbital, Nicklasson is at risk of a painful death because of a lack of regulation.

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Texas

A federal judge in Houston has thrown out a lawsuit by two Death Row inmates who claim the state intends to execute them with compounded drugs of unknown potency and purity.

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Florida

After an earlier execution date got postponed because of a legal challenge, Gov. Rick Scott rescheduled the execution of convicted murderer Askari Abdullah Muhammad for Jan. 7.

The move follows a unanimous Florida Supreme Court ruling last week that the state’s new three-drug cocktail used to execute Death Row inmates does not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

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Ohio

Ohio will use a two-drug combination untried as an execution method in the U.S. to put to death a condemned inmate who raped and killed a pregnant woman, the state prisons agency confirmed Tuesday.

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Wyoming

Wyoming has a backup plan:

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Virginia

Has a backup plan:

The electrifying details.

Missouri and Oklahoma

The boards of pharmacy in Oklahoma and Missouri said Friday that they would not take action on complaints about a compounding pharmacy in Oklahoma that produces Missouri’s execution drug.

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Virginia

Virginia lawmakers are expected to vote this week to establish the electric chair as the state’s default method of execution when drugs used for lethal injection are not available.

The measure, prompted by a long-standing shortage of the drugs, would make Virginia the only state where a death-row prisoner could be forced in some circumstances to be electrocuted.

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Tennessee

The state of Tennessee plans to execute 10 death row inmates over the next two years after changing the drug protocol to be used in lethal injections, officials said Wednesday.

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California

Three former California governors are set to announce their endorsement Thursday of a proposed initiative sponsors say would end lengthy death penalty appeals and speed up executions.
Former governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis will announce at a news conference the launch of an initiative drive for signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot.


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"And yet, I am unmoved." -- Mr. Bennet

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