Sodium thiopental is a barbiturate primarily used to anesthetize surgical patients, induce medical comas and sometimes to euthanize animals.
Hospira is the sole producer of the drug and reports that the shortage could last until next March. The company claims that the shortage is due to unspecified problems with its raw-material suppliers.
As a result of the shortage, several of the 17 prisoners condemned to be put to death by the end of January are likely to receive a temporary reprieve.
33 of the 35 states that still put prisoners to death use the three-drug approach. The remaining two, Ohio and Washington, have opted for using a single heavy dose of sodium thiopental.
Oklahoma and Kentucky have already postponed scheduled executions. Arizona does not have the drug and anticipates that a scheduled October execution will be delayed.
On September 29, after a five-year ban on the death penalty, California was scheduled to execute Albert Greenwood, convicted of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in 1980; that execution will likely not be carried out.
In Oklahoma, two convicted killers are scheduled for lethal injections and only one dose of the drug needed to execute them is available.
Matters became complicated for Oklahoma when the drug shortage pushed back the execution of 38-year-old Jeffrey Matthews who was scheduled to die Aug. 17 for the murder of one of his relatives during a burglary.
Officials wanted to use a substitute drug; Matthews' attorneys objected and a judge stayed his execution until October 16. Prison officials say they have since secured one dose of sodium thiopental for his execution, and they planned to use it on Matthews.
However, attorneys for Donald Wackerly, the second inmate scheduled for execution before Matthews, claim the substitute that his client will receive is inappropriate and possibly inhumane.
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