Deborah Denno comments to NPR about how some states are delaying executions because of a shortage of sodium thiopental, a drug used as an anesthetic and given to prisoners during lethal injections.
Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University Law School, says in states where only this drug is used, executions should not go forward. Other states, Denno says, will have a problem.
“This is the drug that’s supposed to induce unconsciousness in an inmate, and if you don’t have it, that’s per se going to be cruel and unusual [punishment]because the second two drugs are a paralytic agent and a toxic and that’s going to be incredibly painful,” she says. “And there’s consensus on that being inhumane.”
Listen to the entire NPR story.
