A shortage of lethal injection drugs could get much worse and force states to consider other methods of execution, from nitrogen gas to firing squads.
Two major pharmacy groups recently warned their members not to participate in executions due to ethical and liability concerns. The announcements come as pharmaceutical manufacturers have over the past few years prohibited states from using their medications for lethal injections.
Some states looked to pharmacies to make up the shortfall from manufacturers. States such as Texas used compounding pharmacies, which make drugs per patient, to get the three-drug cocktail used to put an inmate to sleep and then stop their heart.
However, last week the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists called for its members to stop compounding drugs for executions, citing liability concerns. On Monday, the American Pharmacists Association issued a similar warning to its more than 62,000 members, noting it wasn’t ethical for pharmacists to be involved in executions.
Currently there are 32 states with the death penalty, and all of them use lethal injection as the primary method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that opposes the death penalty. The federal courts and military court systems also have a death penalty, and also use lethal injection.
Americans’ support of the death penalty remains high, but has been dropping, according to Pew Research Center. Pew found in 2013 that 53 percent of Americans support the death penalty, but that is the lowest rating in four decades.
Death penalty supporters and opponents naturally disagree on the ramifications of the warnings.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the center, said it could be a factor in several states considering abolition or moratoriums of the death penalty, especially after an execution via lethal injection was botched last year.
“The myth that [lethal injection] was swift and effective and painless has been destroyed,” he told the Examiner.
Death penalty supporter Kent Scheidegger described the warnings as “minor in the overall scheme of things.”
“It is not binding, and pharmacists can choose to continue supplying,” Scheidegger, legal director of the think tank Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, told the Examiner. “There are probably some who will go ahead and continue supplying.”
Some states want to make it easier for pharmacies to do that.
Virginia and Missouri are considering bills to keep suppliers confidential. Wyoming already enacted a similar measure, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures.
Dunham said such confidentiality measures take away transparency surrounding the process.
Other states are pursuing backups in case they run out of it. Utah just approved a law that uses firing squads and Tennessee enacted a law last year that goes back to the electric chair.
Scheidegger said that nitrogen gas could be a backup utilized by states if the shortage gets worse.
Oddly enough, the state that performs the most executions, Texas, does not have a backup plan.
Texas has so far executed four people in 2015 and at one point earlier this year ran out of lethal injection drugs. The state was able to buy enough pharmaceuticals from a compounding pharmacy for the four executions scheduled in April.
Texas officials declined to comment on what it plans to do after April for executions scheduled in May and June.
