Editor’s note: This story was produced in collaboration with the Idaho Capital Sun and benefited from public records grant funding through The Gumshoe Group investigative journalism initiative. BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Last June, two days after a condemned man outlived his scheduled execution date, he made a macabre appeal to the agents tasked with guiding […]
Here’s how a Salt Lake City pharmacy played a key role in the execution of an Idaho serial killer
Lethal injection drugs have become a hot commodity, worth big money to states carrying out death sentences.
(Jessie L. Bonner | AP file photo) This Oct. 20, 2011, file photo shows the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution as Security Institution Warden Randy Blades look on in Boise, Idaho. The Idaho Supreme Court recently ruled that records about lethal injection drugs used in executions are public. Among the information revealed was that a Salt Lake City pharmacy was the source for lethal drugs used in the Nov. 18, 2011, execution of Paul Ezra Rhoades.
At a time in which the
Arizona Department of Corrections is facing criticism for crumbling infrastructure, substandard medical care, and understaffing, the department has spent $1.5 million to purchase the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. The exorbitant price, experts say, is a function of the questionable use of the drug for non-medical purposes and the secretive nature of the transaction.
Records obtained by
The Guardian show that, in October 2020, Arizona ordered 1,000 vials of the barbiturate pentobarbital. Each one-gram vial cost the state $1,500, for what the newspaper described as a “jaw-dropping” total of $1.5 million. A heavily redacted invoice (click to enlarge picture) shows that the state ordered 4–8 “unlabeled” jars to be shipped in “Unmarked jars and boxes” to an Arizona location “to be determined.” The state’s execution protocol calls for five grams of the drug, so the vials would be enough for 200 executions in a
Bill for execution drug: $1.5M
Arizona spent $1.5 million this past fall to buy 1,000 vials of an execution drug.
A heavily redacted document obtained by Capitol Media Services shows the invoice from a not-disclosed source for jars of pentobarbital sodium salt to be shipped to the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry in “unmarked jars and boxes.”
The seller’s name is blacked out.
State officials have repeatedly declined to identify where they have attempted to purchase supplies of lethal chemicals. And the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Arizonans have no right to know where the state obtains drugs to execute inmates.