Officials from an Ohio prison announced on Friday that they have added another lethal injection option, due to a shortage of the primary drug usually employed for executions.
Spokesperson for the prison Jo Ellen Smith told the Associated Press that pentobarbital will be the state's main approach for the death penalty. But since Ohio has seen a shortage of the powerful sedative, officials are adding a combination of midazolam and hydromorphone as another choice. This combination will also be substituted for expired portions of pentobarbital, which went bad just a few days before the agency reported the change. The final dose was administered to condemned murderer Henry Mitts, who was put to rest on Sept. 15 for shooting two people, including a police officer from the suburbs of Cleveland.
Ohio isn't the only state scrambling to find surrogate drugs: Georgia, Missouri and Arkansas are also seeking out alternatives. According to AP, the drug's manufacturer, Lundbeck Inc., said two years ago that it would make the drug off-limits for administering the death penalty. After selling the product to Akorn Inc., the prohibition remained in place. Now, supplies in Ohio and other states around the nation are almost gone.
Georgia's supply of pentobarbital reportedly went bad in March, leading state agents to pick up the drug from a compounding pharmacy.
The governor of Arkansas has postponed performing executions while the state's Department of Correction takes another look at its method of legal injection. They might introduce a different drug, or number of drugs.
This is the third time Ohio has made a change to its lethal injection method. Three years ago, Ohio made the change to administer a single dose of sodium thiopental. In 2011, pentobarbital became the main source of poison, after the manufacturer barred the sale and use of sodium thiopental.
