Deborah Denno was quoted in a Daily Mail piece about the struggle that death penalty states are having in carrying out capital punishment, due to a shortage of lethal injection drugs and the controversy over whether those drugs violate the Eighth Amendment.
“The drugs have been challenged for a long time, ever since the late 1980s,” said Deborah Denno, an expert on the death penalty and the director of the Neuroscience and Law Center at Fordham University School of Law in New York.
“They are challenged more now because the drug shortage started in around 2009,” she told AFP.
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Virginia had to go cap in hand to ask for the rare pentobarbital drug from Texas, the most active US death penalty state, in order to execute a convicted murderer.
“Texas seems to have a rather steady supply of a drug for reasons unknown,” Denno explained, suggesting they are possibly coming from a compounding pharmacy, which are not as strictly regulated as traditional drug makers.
