Professor Deborah Denno was quoted in Vox regarding the reason behind Arkansas’s plan to carry out multiple executions in less than two weeks.
But the hurdles to obtaining these drugs precede Arkansas’s execution plans. Hospira was the sole US supplier of sodium thiopental, a drug commonly used in the traditional three-drug cocktail for executions, according to death penalty expert Deborah Denno.
But Hospira stopped producing the drug in 2011 — after struggling to obtain active ingredients for its production and fielding legal threats from authorities in Italy, where the death penalty is vehemently opposed.
