Virginia To Switch Execution Drugs Due To Shortage

The Associated Press
By Dena Potter

RICHMOND

Virginia will join other states that are switching the sedative used in lethal injections because of a nationwide shortage of the drug, officials said Monday.

The Virginia Department of Corrections will substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental, whose sole U.S. manufacturer announced in January it would no longer make the drug.

The announcement sent the nation's 34 death penalty states scrambling to find a new supplier. Some canceled executions, while others obtained the drug from England, but then had it confiscated by federal agents amid questions they circumvented the law to obtain it because that country has banned the drug's export for executions.

It is not clear whether Virginia purchased sodium thiopental from overseas, and if so whether the Drug Enforcement Administration also seized its supply.

Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor referred all questions to the Attorney General's Office, which refused to answer questions about whether Virginia had obtained sodium thiopental from overseas.

Virginia will continue to use a three-drug cocktail, only substituting the sedative drugs, said Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. The first drug sedates the inmate, while a second stops his breathing and the third stops the heart.

"The Virginia protocol for lethal injection has been litigated and has been found to be constitutionally acceptable by every court in Virginia that has looked at it ... and we are confident that the change to allow the drug pentobarbital to be substituted for sodium thiopental in the protocol will be found to be constitutionally acceptable, as well," Gottstein said.

Pentobarbital has survived legal challenges in other states and has been used for recent executions in Oklahoma, Ohio and South Carolina.

Virginia is home to the nation's second-busiest death chamber, behind Texas. There currently are no scheduled executions.