(AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday that it had seized Georgia’s supply of a lethal injection drug because of questions about how it was imported.
Chuvalo Truesdell, an agency spokesman, said he did not know if other states’ supplies of the drug, sodium thiopental, were being collected. The seizure comes less than two months after a convicted killer was executed in Georgia, despite his raising questions about where the state had obtained the drug, an anesthetic, and whether it had expired.
Corrections officials released documents this year that showed Georgia obtained the drug from Link Pharmaceuticals, which was bought five years ago by Archimedes Pharma Ltd. Both are British companies.
The drug was used in January to execute Emmanuel Hammond, who was convicted of killing a preschool teacher. Mr. Hammond’s lawyers sought a delay, claiming the drug came from a “fly-by-night supplier operating from the back of a driving school in England.” They said it could have been counterfeit.
The United States Supreme Court rejected the argument.
Joan Heath, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Corrections, said state officials were not concerned with the quality of the drug. “We contacted the D.E.A. and asked them for a regulatory review, and that’s what we’re doing,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment