In an article published in Route Fifty, Professor Deborah Denno responded to Ohio state Rep. Scott Wiggam introducing legislation that would allow the state to use seized fentanyl for executions.
In response, state Rep. Scott Wiggam introduced legislation to allow the state to use seized fentanyl for executions. “My thought process is one, I know that fentanyl is a drug that can be used in executions—it was used in Nebraska. My other thought process is that I know that we have a lot of it. We’ve seized enough fentanyl or carfentanil in the state of Ohio to kill half the population,” said Wiggam, a Republican from Wooster. But DeWine said he absolutely doesn’t support the idea. “Fentanyl is not an option. We do not believe it would pass constitutional muster,” he said. The proposal has been widely decried by human rights activists and lawyers, including Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University. “Simply because people are dying as a result of fentanyl doesn’t mean they’re dying in a way that would be considered acceptable as a form of execution,” she said.