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As of May 15th, Missouri has adopted this protocol for execution by lethal injection using propofol. (Note the misspelling of the brand name Diprivan.) APP manufactures both Diprivan and generic propofol, Hospira only the generic. The American Society for Health-System Pharmacists reports that the drug is in short supply due to "manufacturing delays" at Hospira.
Given the new protocol, the Missouri Attorney General has petitioned the Missouri Supreme Court to set execution dates for the nine death row inmates who do not already have a date set. All prisoners and their attorneys were also informed, and legal challenges to the untested execution protocol are to be expected.
I tell the detailed story of lethal drugs for injection in my posts below, but here is a summary. Hospira was the only US-approved source of the sodium thiopental that was originally used for lethal injection, but the Italian manufacturing facility with which they contracted refused to produce the drug without guarantees that their output would not be used for executions. Hospira's company policy does not prevent the sale of their products for this purpose. Nebraska fraudulently obtained thiopental from the Indian manufacturer Naari under the guise of having drug samples shipped to Zambia for approval and registration in that country. Naari has requested that the Nebraska Supreme Court order the return of their product, to no avail. After thiopental became hard to obtain, pentobarbital began to be used. It is now unavailable from Lundbeck, the only US-approved supplier, due to the company's enforcement of a shipping procedure designed to prevent the sale of their product for executions. Texas obtained some of their product by deceit, using a DEA registration number for the long-shuttered Huntsville Prison Hospital, and refused to return it to the manufacturer. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott recently upheld an open records request that revealed that the state has supplies for 23 executions because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is not following its own protocol and mixing a backup dose. (See syringes 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4A in the Missouri protocol for an example of how backup doses are prepared.)
Shortage of injectable pentobarbital for execution by lethal injection
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