Deborah Denno comments to the Tennessean on the state’s dilemma between passing a law allowing the state to use alternative means of executions — electrocution, hanging, gas chamber or some other method — or allowing death row inmates to remain indefinitely imprisoned.
The drug shortage is providing one of the most significant challenges to the death penalty in decades, said Deborah Denno, professor at Fordham Law School in New York and a death penalty scholar and critic.
“Within the history of the death penalty, this is a very big deal. We’ve never had a situation like this ever,” she said. “We’ve never ran out of gas for gas chambers or rope for hanging or electrical equipment for electric chairs.”
Lethal injection was first widely adopted in 1982, Denno said. She said it was embraced as an alternative to the electric chair, which was coming under increasing scrutiny because of constitutional challenges that it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
In fact, some states have botched lethal injections, with some taking hours to kill the inmate, Denno said.
Denno, with Fordham Law School, said pentobarbital appeared the most likely option for states such as Tennessee. But, like sodium thiopental, suppliers are scarce. Pentobarbital is supplied by a Danish company called H. Lundbeck A/S , which is receiving pressure overseas to stop selling the drug for executions.
“It’s a drug that is not a very big part of their revenue,” she said. “They might find with time, as they come under increasing scrutiny and pressure, that it may not be worth their while to continue selling this drug to us.”
The entire Tennessean story ran on April 17, 2011.
