Execution drugs came from Britain

originally published by: Human Rights Now
26th October 2010

Arizona’s Attorney General Terry Goddard has reportedly confirmed that his state’s stash of non-FDA approved sodium thiopental came from Great Britain. The state continues to try to kill Jeffrey Landrigan with this drug, and continues to try to keep details of their supplier a secret, using a law that shields the Arizona’s execution team from public scrutiny.

So an as yet unnamed British pharmaceutical company is now a member of Arizona’s execution team.

As our allies in Europe are dragged into this sordid execution mess, Arizona soldiers on with its attempt to carry out this execution (in defiance of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). The full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court are likely to weigh in later today.

But whatever the outcome, two important points are worth mentioning. First, many people are now ashamed to be associated with the death penalty, and that includes those charged with carrying it out.

Though ostensibly for the purpose of protecting execution team members from harassment by death penalty opponents (who rarely do anything more than deliver petitions and sternly worded letters), the real purpose of the Arizona law (and similar laws in others states, and an even more extreme effort in Texas), is to drive capital punishment into the shadows.

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Posted by Tippa Naphtali on 27/10/2010. Filed under Capital Punishment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry