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Nebraska Continues to Attempt Lethal Injection Drugs

By Associated Press

11/03/2015

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska prison officials unsuccessfully tried to buy a key lethal injection drug from a Mississippi-based pharmaceutical company after spending months trying to import tens of thousands of dollars in execution drugs from India, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services ordered about $825 worth of pancuronium bromide last month from Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Plus, which replaced a firm that was dissolved in 2013 after it faced disciplinary action in other states.

Documents obtained through an open records request show the order was placed Oct. 14, amid an ongoing challenge to lawmakers' decision to repeal the death penalty in Nebraska, which hasn't carried out an execution in 18 years. The four-box order was cancelled a day later, after the company said the product wasn't available.

Nebraska had already spent $26,000 to buy 1,000 doses of the drug from an Indian distributor, along with 1,000 doses of the anesthetic sodium thiopental, but the shipment was blocked in India because it didn't have proper shipping papers. Similar orders by Arizona and Texas that made it to the United States were confiscated by federal authorities.

Both drugs are required as part of Nebraska's three-drug lethal injection protocol, but sodium thiopental currently has no legal uses in the U.S. Nebraska already has the third drug, potassium chloride, which is used to stop the heart.

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