NEW YORK, April 13 (UPI) -- Some U.S. states, faced with a shortage of a court-approved drugs used to carry out executions by lethal injection, have been swapping the drug, documents show.
Death-penalty states that use lethal injection for executions have been using barbiturate sodium thiopental. But getting the drug has become difficult since the U.S. pharmaceutical firm Hospira Inc. announced this year it would stop selling it.
The New York Times reported Wednesday recently released documents from lawsuits in various states reveal the cooperation among state penal systems to help each other obtain sodium thiopental. The newspaper said the end result is prisons have created what the newspaper calls a legally questionable swap club to ensure availability of the drug when needed for an execution.
Wendy Kelley, a deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, said in a deposition her state has given the drug to Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee free of charge, and obtained it from Texas and Tennessee. She said she obtained sodium thiopental from a British company after learning about it from corrections officers in Georgia.
"I went wherever they had them," Kelley said. "As best as I'm aware, the agreement my director had with other directors, any time there was an exchange, was that there would be a payback when needed."
Kentucky Corrections Commissioner LaDonna Thompson wrote in a memo she had contacted departments in Georgia, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee, and even tried to get the drug from an Indian firm, the Times reported.
The newspaper said other documents confirm the cooperation among the states.
Legal advocates for death row inmates are trying to prevent states from importing the lethal injection drugs.
