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Thread: Georgia Capital Punishment News

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    Georgia Capital Punishment News

    July 14, 2008

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a person found guilty of murdering a law enforcement officer is eligible for the death penalty, even if the killer did not know the victim was an officer at the time.

    The 5-2 ruling was issued before the upcoming trials against Antron Dawayne Fair and Damon Antwon Jolly, who are accused of killing Bibb County Sheriff's Deputy Joseph Whitehead in 2006. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against both men, who will be tried separately.

    Whitehead, the lead officer in a drug investigation, entered the home using a "no-knock" warrant. Within seconds, Whitehead was shot and killed. Investigators found crack cocaine and marijuana while processing the scene.

    Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Fair and Jolly on the grounds they committed the aggravating circumstance of killing a law enforcement officer in the performance of his duty. Defense lawyers contend their clients should not be eligible for the death penalty because they did not know Whitehead was an officer.

    In Monday's ruling, Justice George Carley wrote that the state's death-penalty statute "is silent regarding the defendant's knowledge of the officer's status." If the Legislature, when enacting the law in 1973, had intended to require knowledge, it would have done so, Carley said.

    Justice Carol Hunstein, joined by Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, dissented on this issue.

    "Clearly, a defendant who knowingly murders a peace officer ... is more culpable than one who does not know the status of his victim," the dissent said. "Without such knowledge, there is nothing to distinguish the defendant who murders a victim who by happenstance was such a public servant from a defendant who murders any other victim, and thus nothing to specifically justify imposition of the ultimate punishment."

    Fair and Jolly also contended that they were justified in opening fire on the officers because they thought they were being robbed, not the subject of a "no-knock" warrant.

    The state's high court said the trial judge erred during pretrial hearings by not ruling on the issue of whether the two men were entitled to immunity from prosecution for that reason. The state Supreme Court directed the judge to decide that issue before the case goes to trial.

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    February 3, 2009

    The state Senate has approved legislation which would allow prosecutors to seek life without parole against convicted killers without first pursuing the death penalty.

    The legislation from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Preston Smith passed unanimously Tuesday.

    Under current law, prosecutors may not obtain a sentence of life without parole unless they first seek the death penalty. Smith, a Rome Republican, says such capital trials are time-consuming and costly.

    Life without parole is already an option for prosecutors in rape cases.

    Smith says the bill has the support of prosecutors but that lawyers in the defense community are split on the change.

    The bill now moves to the state House.

    http://www.13wmaz.com/article/20090203/NEWS02/90203018/1013/NEWS04

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    Ga. AG candidates want to speed executions

    Both Republican candidates for state attorney general say they would like to see execution sentences be carried out quicker.

    Cobb County Commission chair Sam Olens and state Sen. Preston Smith are in a runoff to face Democratic nominee and former prosecutor Ken Hodges in the fall.

    Besides executions, both candidates said at a debate in Dalton on Saturday that they would work to pass a stricter immigration enforcement law similar to that of Arizona.

    Olens took some heat from Smith for not having a National Rifle Association endorsement. Olens said the lack of endorsement is because Smith has a voting record in Georgia Legislature while he none. Olens said he is a lifetime NRA member and strong Second Amendment supporter.

    The runoff election is Aug. 10.

    (Source: The Associated Press)

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    Mental retardation burden of proof in death cases unconstitutional

    The burden that Georgia places on death-penalty defendants to prove they are mentally retarded -- and thus ineligible for execution -- is unconstitutional, the federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled Friday.

    The court, in a 2-1 decision, said that requiring defendants to prove they are mentally retarded beyond a reasonable doubt violates the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment. It also will "result in the execution of the mentally retarded," which the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited in 2002.

    The decision should result in new hearings for up to 10 inmates on Georgia's death row who previously raised mental retardation claims at trial, said Brian Kammer, director of the Georgia Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center, which handles death-row appeals. It also will affect all death cases going forward in which defendants claim to be mentally retarded.

    The ruling corrects a "serious defect" in Georgia's death-penalty system, Kammer said. "[It] ensures that Georgia defendants will finally have meaningful protection from wrongful execution if they are mentally retarded."

    The state Attorney General's Office is reviewing the decision, spokesman Russ Willard said. It could ask the entire, 12-member 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling by the three-judge panel or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Friday's ruling noted that Georgia is the only state in the country that requires a defendant raising a mental retardation claim to clear the highest burden-of-proof threshold in legal proceedings -- beyond a reasonable doubt. The ruling noted that 22 states require proof of mental retardation by a preponderance of the evidence, the lowest threshold. Four states have adopted a clear and convincing evidence standard and three states have not set a burden of proof.

    Under Georgia law, a defendant who shows he has "significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning" that manifested itself during the early, developmental period of life is deemed to be mentally retarded.

    Friday's ruling was a victory for Warren Hill, who was sentenced to death in 1991 for killing a fellow inmate in a state prison in Lee County. At trial, Hill raised mental retardation claims.

    Writing jointly for the majority, judges Rosemary Barkett and Stanley Marcus said that while Georgia enacted the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard to decrease the risk of a defendant mistakenly being found the be mentally retarded, it actually increases the risk that a defendant will erroneously be found not to be mentally retarded. "This conception of the reasonable doubt standard, by its very terms, ensures that some, if not many, mentally retarded offenders will be executed in violation of the Eighth Amendment," the judges said.

    In dissent, Judge Frank Hull said the U.S. Supreme Court has left it up to individual states to decide the appropriate standard for mental retardation claims. Georgia's law, she added, gives a defendant a full and fair trial on mental retardation claims with "virtually no limit" to the evidence that can be presented to support such a claim.

    Fred Bright, district attorney of the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit in central Georgia, said Friday's ruling came as no surprise. In 2007, out of an abundance of caution because he thought Georgia's law was vulnerable to attack, Bright agreed to not require Brian Duane Brookins prove he was mentally retarded beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, Bright allowed Brookins to use the preponderance of the evidence standard.

    Brookins, who killed his estranged wife and stepdaughter, was still sentenced to death. "I like to try a death case once and get it right the first time," Bright said. "I knew Georgia's law was hanging by a thread because it was all the way out there all by itself."

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    Georgia law requiring that mentally retarded death penalty defendants, in order to avoid execution, must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are retarded violates the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment, a judicial panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has found.

    In issuing the opinion, the appellate panel reversed a 2003 Georgia Supreme Court ruling, finding instead that the state's stringent standard of proof "is not an appropriate way to vindicate a mentally retarded offender's constitutional right not to be put to death."

    The appellate opinion, issued June 18 in a 20-year-old state prison murder case, would bring Georgia law in line with the remainder of the country as to how mentally handicapped defendants charged with capital crimes are treated, and when and how they may face the death penalty.

    Although Georgia was the first state in the nation to outlaw the execution of mentally retarded defendants in 1988, it remains the only state to require an offender to provide proof of mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt -- the most stringent legal standard, according to the opinion. The maximum penalty for mentally retarded offenders in Georgia is life imprisonment.

    Twenty-two other states require a defendant to prove mental retardation by a preponderance of the evidence; four states have adopted a "clear and convincing standard" -- both less stringent, civil standards of proof. Three states have no uniform standard of proof with regard to mentally retarded capital defendants.

    The findings of the 11th Circuit panel -- which included Judges Rosemary Barkett, Stanley Marcus and Frank M. Hull -- included a strong 29-page dissent by Hull, who said that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision outlawing the execution of mentally retarded defendants, Atkins v. Virginia, "left it for the states to develop the procedural and substantive guides for determining who is mentally retarded."

    Hull concluded, "Because there is no 'clearly established' federal rule regarding the burden of proof for mental retardation claims," a 1996 federal law that restricts federal civil appeals by convicted criminal defendants "mandates that this lower federal court leave the Georgia Supreme Court decision alone -- even if we believe it incorrect or unwise -- and affirm this case."

    State Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker, who is running for the state Democratic nomination for governor and whose office is defending the Georgia statute, will ask the the 11th Circuit to reconsider the ruling en banc, Baker spokesman Russell D. Willard said Tuesday. "We believe the majority decision was erroneous, and we look forward to making our argument before the full 11th Circuit," Willard said. He declined to detail the nature of the errors, saying that they would be included in pleadings the attorney general will file "shortly."

    Baker was unavailable, according to a campaign staff member, and did not return calls to his campaign headquarters on the ruling or his office's decision to appeal it.

    Brian Kammer, an attorney with the Georgia Resource Center who has been representing defendant Warren Lee Hill Jr. in state and federal appeals of his 1991 death sentence since 1996, said the appellate panel's ruling has reversed a "stark instance of injustice."

    "The burden of proof has been challenged several times in different cases unsuccessfully in Georgia," Kammer said. "But it certainly hadn't gotten to 11th Circuit before now."

    Hill's case, Kammer continued, "is a primary example of how the reasonable doubt burden of proof will likely result in the execution of the mentally retarded."

    According to court pleadings and opinions in the case, Hill's death penalty sentence stems from his 1990 slaying of a fellow prison inmate. At the time, Hill was serving a life sentence for the murder of his girlfriend, whom he had shot to death. Hill bludgeoned to death a fellow inmate, who was also serving a life sentence for murder, while he was sleeping.

    In 1993, the state Supreme Court affirmed Hill's murder conviction and death sentence for the inmate slaying and sent Hill to the state's Death Row. The following year, Hill filed a state habeas petition seeking reconsideration of his conviction and later amended it to assert for the first time that he was mentally retarded. In 1997, Muscogee County Superior Court Judge John D. Allen granted Hill a writ of habeas corpus to adjudicate the mental retardation claim, which was appealed and then remanded to Allen with instructions that, in considering Hill's habeas appeal, the judge should apply Georgia's "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof. After an extensive evidentiary hearing, Allen found that Hill's low IQ scores satisfied criteria that he was mildly mentally retarded, but that Hill's adaptive skills -- which enabled him to hold jobs, serve in the military, save money to buy a motorcycle, learn to drive and have a girlfriend -- prevented him from meeting other state criteria that would establish he was retarded.

    Allen's order was issued a month before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which found that mentally retarded individuals "because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses ... do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct" and those impairments "can jeopardize the reliability and fairness of capital proceedings against mentally retarded defendants."

    In light of the Atkins ruling, Allen agreed to reconsider his prior ruling and, in 2002, vacated his earlier order, finding that the state "has created an extremely high likelihood of erroneously executing mentally retarded defendants by placing 'almost the entire risk of error' upon the defendant" in the context of capital punishment where due process "requires the State to provide defendants more, not less, procedural protections."

    Allen also found that the standard set by Georgia "is fundamentally unfair."

    On appeal, the state Supreme Court reversed Allen's finding and upheld the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. A federal court judge rejected Hill's federal habeas petition appealing that ruling, but allowed Hill to appeal the matter to the 11th Circuit in 2008.

    In its June 18 ruling, the appellate panel majority noted that the Georgia Supreme Court erred in concluding that the Georgia Legislature was "within constitutional bounds in establishing a procedure for considering alleged mental retardation that limits the exemption to those whose mental deficiencies are significant enough to be provable beyond a reasonable doubt."

    "The reasoning of the Georgia Supreme Court is contrary to the command of Atkins because the reasonable doubt standard, as applied to claims of mental retardation, necessarily will result in the death of mentally retarded individuals," the opinion stated. "While it is true that Atkins left it to the states to develop ways to ensure that those mentally retarded offenders 'about whom there is a national consensus' are not subject to capital punishment, ... the Court did not give the states unfettered authority to develop procedures that nullify the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on the execution of the mentally retarded."

    The discretion afforded to the states 'is not unbounded," the majority of the panel held, "and the means used to discriminate must be 'appropriate.'... t would not be an 'appropriate' means to impose a burden of proof that is so insuperably high that it inevitably excluded from Atkins' protection a substantial number of mentally retarded persons. Yet because of the highly subjective nature of the factual inquiry necessary to establish mental retardation, that is precisely what Georgia's once-pathbreaking statute effectively has done by requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

    In its opinion, the appellate panel observed that the standard of proof applied "will affect whether the risk of an erroneous conclusion will more often fall on the side of convicting an innocent person or releasing a guilty one."

    In criminal cases, the United States has mandated that the highest standard of proof -- guilt beyond a reasonable doubt -- be applied "and placing the burden of proof on the government, we make it clear that we will tolerate almost no error with respect to the reliability of the evidence leading to the deprivation of one's liberty. This burden and standard of proof reflect society's belief that 'it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.'"

    In Atkins, according to the 11th Circuit panel, the Supreme Court's paramount concern was that the states "protect the constitutional right of the mentally retarded not to be executed."

    "Yet, rather than securing the constitutional right at issue here -- protecting the mentally retarded from execution -- Georgia has done quite the opposite," the appellate ruling holds. "By imposing the overwhelming majority of the risk of error on the defendant in its application of the most stringent standard possible, Georgia holds that it is far better to erroneously execute a mentally retarded person than to erroneously impose a life sentence on one not mentally retarded. Requiring a defendant to prove mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt is appropriate only if the interests of a state in maximizing the number of death sentences outweigh the constitutional right of mentally retarded offenders not to be executed."

    Hull asserted in her dissent that there is no U.S. Supreme Court case, including Atkins, "suggesting, much less holding, that a reasonable doubt burden of proof for claims of mental retardation violates the Eighth Amendment. Atkins did not answer that question."

    That does not mean that the high court concluded that the Constitution places no restrictions on a state's determinations of mental retardation, Hull continued. "It simply did not consider or reach the burden-of-proof issue, and neither has any subsequent Supreme Court opinion. Nor do I gainsay the possibility that the Supreme Court may later determine that a reasonable doubt standard for establishing the mental retardation exception to execution is constitutionally permissible."

    Her dissent continued, "We are not concerned with what a United States Supreme Court holding could or should be in the future, but only what it was as of the time of the Georgia Supreme Court's decision ... in 2003."

    Hull concluded, "There is no historical Eighth Amendment right of a mentally retarded person not to be executed. ... Given that Hill failed to meet Georgia's reasonable doubt standard, he failed to demonstrate that he is mentally retarded, and therefore, failed to prove an impending Eighth Amendment violation. Because Hill has not established mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt, a denial of Hill's petition does not result in the execution of a mentally retarded individual under Georgia law."

    http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202463177358&rss=newswire

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    Appeals Court to Review Ga. Death Penalty Rule

    ATLANTA (AP) -- A federal appeals court will rule on whether Georgia sets too strict a standard for deciding whether death penalty defendants are mentally retarded, meaning they cannot be executed.

    The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Tuesday to review a ruling by a three-judge panel that earlier found that Georgia's requirements are unconstitutional.

    Georgia is the only state in the country that requires defendants to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are retarded. Beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest burden of proof in the legal system.

    In June, the panel ruled 2-1 that Georgia's rule increases the risk that a mentally retarded person could be executed. The court said this violated a ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    http://www2.wsav.com/news/2010/nov/1...le-ar-1072153/

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    Judges consider Ga. execution standard

    The full federal appeals court is set to hear a death penalty case that could impact the fate of condemned inmates on Georgia's death row.

    The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday will review a ruling by a three-judge panel that struck down a Georgia law that required capital defendants to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they are mentally retarded to avoid execution.

    Georgia became the first state in 1988 that banned the execution of mentally retarded inmates.

    It also is the only state in the country that requires defendants to prove they are mentally retarded beyond a reasonable doubt, the most stringent legal standard.

    http://www.macon.com/2011/02/15/1451...#ixzz1E1qQLhLG

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    DEA seizes Georgia's supply of lethal injection drug

    The Drug Enforcement Administration has seized Georgia's supply of a key execution drug over questions about how it was imported to the United States.

    Drugs were seized today by the DEA from our facility in Jackson," Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kristen Stancil told the AJC.

    The seizure comes more than two weeks after an attorney representing a death row inmate from Cobb County wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder saying the Georgia Department of Corrections circumvented federal law in trying to quickly secure a scarce drug used in lethal injections.

    John Bentivoglio, a former associate deputy U.S. attorney general in Washington, described extraordinary steps the DOC took to get the sedative thiopental, a scheduled III non-narcotic controlled substance, when a shipment for several states, including Georgia, was held by U.S. Customs in Memphis last summer.

    The letter said Corrections is not registered with the federal government to import drugs and the agency did not “submit a declaration to the Drug Enforcement Administration when GDC imported thiopental last year.

    Stancil told the AJC after the letter was mailed, the agency asked the DEA for assistance "to make sure that the department was in compliance with the way we handled controlled substances."

    Like many states that execute criminals, Georgia uses a three-drug cocktail. The first one is a sedative. The second drug paralyzes the inmate. The third drug stops the heart.

    But thiopental, the sedative, has been in short supply nationwide because companies in this country and abroad have refused to provide it if it is going to be used in an execution. Several states have had to delay executions because the drugs they have in stock had expired. In Georgia, that same concern has been raised in two scheduled executions, the death of Emmanuel Hammond Jan. 25 and the delayed execution of Roy Willard Blankenship in February.

    http://www.ajc.com/news/dea-seizes-g...ly-873788.html

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    Ga. considers execution drug switch

    Georgia prison officials are laying the groundwork to swap out a key sedative used for lethal injections after federal regulators took the state's stockpile of sodium thiopental that is in short supply nationwide, according to more than 1,000 pages of documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

    State Department of Corrections official met with counterparts in Ohio and Oklahoma, two states that have already used another drug, pentobarbital, to execute inmates. They have also collected hundreds of pages of legal filings and other documents about the use of pentobarbital in those states, according to files obtained through an open records request.

    The trips came a week after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration took Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental over questions whether the state circumvented law to get it. The move effectively blocked Georgia from scheduling and carrying out any executions.

    Rob Jones, the legal counsel for the department, said Monday that there's no timetable on a switch and that the final decision would come from Brian Owens, the department's commissioner. Officials were still researching to find the "best way to carry out this procedure in the most humane way possible."

    Georgia would be the fourth state to switch to pentobarbital, a surgical sedative that's also commonly used to euthanize animals. Oklahoma, Ohio and Texas have already switched, and Arizona and Mississippi said they were planning on it.

    The documents include hundreds of pages of court records, legal rulings, expert witness statements and testimony from cases in Oklahoma and Ohio. State policymakers are also reviewing independent data, including a 2010 medical study on the impact of pentobarbital on patients suffering from brain trauma and a 2008 law review article that details how sodium thiopental works.

    Corrections officials also sought to get a more direct look at what other states were doing. Jones and Carl Humphrey, warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, which houses the state's death row, met with counterparts in Oklahoma in late March. They traveled to Ohio a week later, where they were shown a walkthrough of execution procedure, Jones said.

    Oklahoma uses pentobarbital as part of a three-drug combination while Ohio uses a single dose of the drug to execute inmates.

    The trove included some data that didn't refer to pentobarbital as well. One document was a 2010 report from the Oregon Public Health Division on a state law that allows terminally ill patients to get lethal doses of prescription drugs from their physicians. Someone highlighted a line in the report that noted two of the patients who took the medications did not immediately die.

    Many of the nation's 34 death penalty states have scrambled over the last year to find a new supplier of sodium thiopental since its sole manufacturer in the U.S. stopped making the drug. Several states postponed executions and some have looked overseas to secure a supply.

    Georgia's stockpile of sodium thiopental — believed to be around 20 grams, enough for at least four executions — has been under scrutiny since corrections officials released documents that said the state bought the drug from Dream Pharma, a company in London that has the same address as the Elgone Driving Academy.

    Defense attorneys call it a fly-by-night pharmacy, and critics say Georgia may have failed to properly register with the DEA before importing a controlled substance. The firm hasn't responded to several email and phone calls seeking comment.

    Jones said Monday the department has not yet heard back from the DEA. He said state officials are confident in the quality of the sodium thiopental supply, which was used to execute two inmates.

    "We didn't have any questions about whether or not it was somehow flawed," he said.

    Georgia is not the only death penalty state under federal scrutiny. The DEA has also taken supplies of sodium thiopental from Kentucky and Tennessee, preventing any executions in those states.

    Substituting a new drug would clear the way for Georgia to execute Troy Anthony Davis, who was convicted in the 1989 slaying of a Savannah police officer.

    Prosecutors spent more than two decades trying to execute him and won a key legal battle in March when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected what could be his final appeal. But the state couldn't schedule his execution because it didn't have the lethal injection drug.

    The intense jockeying for sodium thiopental has grown worse since Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., announced in January it will no longer make the drug.

    Records reviewed by AP found that as supplies of sodium thiopental dwindled, Georgia and at least six other states — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Nebraska and Tennessee — obtained the drug overseas, with several of them citing Georgia as the trailblazer.

    http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/art...#ixzz1JG0y3FSN

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    AP: Georgia switches execution drug

    The state of Georgia is switching one of the drugs it uses to execute prisoners after federal regulators seized the state's stockpile of a sedative used in the three-drug execution combination, the state corrections department said Friday.

    The Georgia Department of Corrections will substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental, which is in scarce supply nationwide, said Robert Jones, the department's general counsel. It would be used as the first part of a three-drug combination with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

    Jones said the state is switching to pentobarbital because it's readily available throughout the U.S. and several other death penalty states have already switched to the drug.

    "We're confident it will be effective," he said.

    The decision comes weeks after Georgia surrendered its supply of sodium thiopental to the Drug Enforcement Administration amid questions about whether the prison officials circumvented the law to obtain the supply.

    The change in drugs should clear the way for Georgia to execute Troy Anthony Davis, who was sentenced to die for the 1989 slaying of a Savannah police officer. Davis has become a cause celebre for the international anti-death penalty movement amid claims he is innocent. State authorities have set three previous execution dates for the condemned man since 2007 only to have each postponed so judges could review the case.

    Chatham County District Attorney spokeswoman Alicia Johnson said the office was "not immediately" filing paperwork to seek an execution order for Davis.

    Many of the country's 34 death penalty states have scrambled to find a new supplier of sodium thiopental after its sole manufacturer in the U.S. stopped making the drug in January. Several states postponed executions amid the shortage, and some have looked overseas to secure a supply.

    Georgia's stockpile of sodium thiopental — believed to be around 20 grams, enough for at least four executions — has been under scrutiny since corrections officials released documents in court that showed the state bought the drug from Dream Pharma in London.

    Defense attorneys call it a fly-by-night supplier that operates from the back of a driving school. The firm hasn't responded to repeated emails and phone calls seeking comment.

    John Bentivoglio, who represents a condemned Georgia inmate, has said Georgia may have also failed to properly register with the DEA before importing a controlled substance. He said the violation means "adulterated, counterfeit or otherwise ineffective" sodium thiopental could be used in executions.

    State officials say they don't have concerns about its quality.

    "We have no concerns about the particular pharmaceuticals we used to carry out executions at all," Jones told the Associated Press. "They were appropriately packaged, appropriately labeled. We're confident also the state didn't break any criminal laws of any kind. It's a regulatory question, and the question was whether we had sent a letter to the DEA advising them we were importing from overseas."

    He said that question is still under investigation. The Justice Department declined to comment on the probe.

    Georgia officials have laid the groundwork for a switch for weeks. Corrections officials met with counterparts in Ohio and Oklahoma, which have already used pentobarbital to execute inmates. They have also collected hundreds of pages of legal filings and other documents about the drugs, and drafted several proposals for the switch, according to more than 1,000 pages of files reviewed by The Associated Press.

    Georgia is one of at least 10 states that have switched or are considering a switch to pentobarbital, a surgical sedative that's also commonly used to euthanize animals. Oklahoma, Ohio, Texas, South Carolina and Alabama are among those that have already switched to pentobarbital, and other states said they were planning a similar move.

    The DEA has also taken supplies of sodium thiopental from Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina.

    Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Illinois, said in January it would no longer make sodium thiopental. Records reviewed by The Associated Press found that as supplies of sodium thiopental dwindled, at least seven states — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska and Tennessee — obtained sodium thiopental overseas, with several of them citing Georgia as the trailblazer.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...shortage_n.htm

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