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Ohio Is First to Change to One Drug in Executions

Breaking ranks with the 35 other states that use lethal injections to execute prisoners, Ohio on Friday became the first state to say it would switch to a single drug, rather than a three-drug cocktail, in its death penalty procedure.Critics have long argued that using a single drug, the preferred method in animal euthanasia, is more humane than the three-drug cocktail, which involves a short-acting barbiturate to render the inmate unconscious, followed by a paralytic and then a chemical to stop the heart. But states have resisted changing the three-drug procedure, which has been in use since the late 1970s. And in a 2008 ruling that upheld Kentucky?s method of putting condemned prisoners to death, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that the three-drug cocktail posed an unconstitutional risk of a condemned inmate?s suffering acute yet undetectable pain...continue to full post

Full post as published by Lethal Injection on November 15, 2009 (boomark / email).