Deborah Denno comments to Agence France-Presse on the drug shortage that has already forced postponement of lethal injection executions across the United States.
“In this country we are so used to having executions, it makes legislators nervous” when they are halted, Deborah Denno, a criminal law professor at Fordham University in New York, told AFP.
“The more you delay, the more people realize that the death penalty doesn’t serve the purpose it’s supposed to serve.”
Professor Denno said the states may have acquired drugs of inferior quality.
“If it’s coming for example from China, which has used lethal injection… we don’t know who is making the thiopental in China or where that’s coming from,” she said. “Their system is completely secretive.”
She described the drug shortage and resulting disarray as “troubling.”
This article appeared in Agence France-Presse on October 24, 2010.