Inmates cannot be put to death in Oklahoma without information about the drugs that will be used to kill them, a county judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling comes as a shortage of lethal injection drugs has sent states scrambling to find a legal means of executing inmates. A dearth of lethal injection drugs has been driven largely by opposition to the death penalty by international manufacturers and the countries that host those manufacturers.
Without these drugs, states have turned to several controversial alternatives that raise legal and humanitarian red flags. One alternative in several states has been to use small, individually made batches of the lethal injection drugs through what is known as compounding pharmacies. These pharmacies are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, meaning there is limited assessment of their safety and effectiveness. While even the FDA acknowledges that pharmacy compounding can serve a useful purpose for those patients with special needs, they have frequently been associated with untested and questionable quality. In fact, a pharmacist providing expert testimony in a recent lawsuit on this issue said the risk of contamination is quite high, and that contaminated lethal injection drugs can lead to severe suffering during execution.
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment