By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A national shortage of one of the drugs used in lethal injections has caused some states to postpone executions while Arkansas has plenty of the chemical with no executions in sight.
Several of the 35 states that rely on lethal injection to put condemned prisoners to death are having difficulty finding sodium thiopental, the anesthetic that renders an inmate unconscious in a process that also includes pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes muscles, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
The shortage of sodium thiopental delayed an execution in Oklahoma last month and forced the governor of Kentucky to postpone signing of death warrants for two inmates.
Dina Tyler, spokeswoman for the Arkansas prison system, said Tuesday the state has plenty of sodium thiopental on hand, but that the drug probably will not be needed for some time because there are no executions pending in the state.
“If we were doing any executions right now there would be a great chance of (the shortage) impacting Arkansas,” Tyler said.
Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., the only manufacturer of sodium thiopental in the U.S., has blamed the shortage on unspecified problems with its raw-material supplier and said new batches of the drug will not be available until January at the earliest.
No one has been put to death in Arkansas since condemned killer Eric Randall Nance’s execution Nov. 28, 2005, in the 1993 death of Julie Heath near Malvern.
The state Supreme Court in April stayed the scheduled execution of Stacey Eugene Johnson less than a week before he was to be put to death in the slaying of De Queen resident Carol Jean Heath in 1993.
Earlier in the month, the state’s highest court stayed the execution of condemned killer Don W. Davis just hours before he was to be put to death April 12 in the 1990 execution-style slaying of Rogers resident Jane Daniel.
On May 13, the state Supreme Court stayed scheduled May 24 execution of Jack Harold Jones in the 1995 rape and murder of Bald Knob bookkeeper Mary Phillips, whose daughter also was severely beaten in the attack.
