Proposed death penalty rules in Maryland are being revised so officials can change the drugs used for putting inmates to death, something that will delay executions in the state even longer. None of Maryland’s five inmates on death row can be executed until the regulations are put in place, the result of a 2006 Maryland Court of Appeals ruling.
In a letter obtained by The Washington Examiner, Gary Maynard, the secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, explains to the state legislative review committee overseeing the regulations that revisions are needed because sodium thiopental, a drug Maryland plans to use for lethal injections, is no longer available for purchase in the United States.
Hospira, the only company in the country that makes sodium thiopental, recently announced it no longer would manufacture the drug.
“I have consulted with my assistant attorney general, whose judgment and advice is that a change to the drugs used in the lethal injection process would be a substantive change to the proposed regulations,” Maynard wrote.
Many “states are now in the process of reviewing and revising their protocols in light of this development,” he continued.
He said he will resubmit regulations after performing a “review.”
Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services, said there’s no timeframe for resubmitting the proposal.
“It’s another bump in the road for the whole process,” said state Sen. Paul Pinsky, a Prince George’s County Democrat and chairman of the legislative committee overseeing the regulations.
In 2009, Gov. Martin O’Malley pushed for the abolition of the death penalty in the state, but lawmakers instead voted to make it harder to put someone to death. Maryland has not had any executions since 2005.
Pinsky, who said he’s against the death penalty, said he agrees with the decision to revise the regulations and assumes it could take “three and six months or maybe a little longer.”
