INDIANAPOLIS – After state officials announced last week that Indiana will resume executions for the first time in a decade, secrecy shrouds the new drug, pentobarbital, acquired for the impending lethal injections.
The one-drug method is a departure from the state’s protocol used since 1995, which utilizes three chemicals.
Although no state-level executions in Indiana have used pentobarbital before, 13 federal executions carried out at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute have been carried out with the drug. Fourteen states have used pentobarbital in executions, too.
But state and federal officials alike have remained closed-lipped about where pentobarbital is sourced from and how much it costs. Also still unknown is the amount Indiana has acquired and when the current doses expire.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that tracks state and federal executions, said it’s also critical for the public to know who will be administering the drug — and how — as well as what training those individuals will receive.
DPIC’s Maher told the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “This is an official government function, and in a democracy, we value honesty and transparency in our government officials and their acts. Voters in Indiana deserve to know what their government is doing in their name.”
The Hoosier state has carried out 20 executions since 1981, the first three by electrocution. The rest have been by lethal injection — which is now the only method permitted by state law.
The Indiana Code doesn’t specify what drugs are to be used for executions, saying only that the drugs must be injected intravenously in a quantity and for an amount of time sufficient to kill the inmate.
Read more of the Casey Smith story for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, here.
