Last semester, both the September execution of Teresa Lewis in Virginia and the possible stoning of Sakineh Ashtiani in Iran made me question our country’s use of the death sentence.
 
Beyond the financial irresponsibility of the punishment I discussed in said article, it appears there’s now more cause for questioning the death penalty.
It turns out most of the 35 states that have the death penalty have run low on the anesthetic sodium thiopental, which is used as part of the injection process.
 
While this low supply may be a problem in and of itself, some of our possible sources for the drug (like Germany and England) have refused to supply us with more.
 
Supplies of sodium thiopental started to dwindle in the U.S. after the sole American manufacturer, Hospira, ran out of stock in 2009. Hospira announced on Jan. 21 it was going to stop making the drug all together, disapproving of its use in state executions.
 
Because of this scarcity, some states have started to postpone executions, while others have resorted to using drugs intended for animals. This was the case for Oklahoma inmate John Duty, who was executed on Dec. 16 last year after strangling his roommate while serving three life sentences for previous crimes.
 
He was the first American to be executed like this. However, Ohio recently announced it will follow the same route and will no longer use the scarce sodium thiopental. Instead, it will switch to the drug pentobarbital.
 
While the supplies have been running low, the Food and Drug Administration has been apparently helping some of these states procure sources of sodium thiopental from overseas. Some people have taken issue with this. However, the FDA does not test to make sure these drugs are reliable, stating it doesn’t have regulatory power over drugs used in executions.
 
One of these foreign sources is England, whose sole producer of the drug, Archimedes Pharma, has come under fire recently for supposedly supplying Arizona with the drug.
 
Several states are suspected to have acquired the drug from this source, and Arizona claims it simply has been following Arkansas’ lead. All the while, California is still awaiting a $36,415 shipment it ordered in December from a British source it refuses to name.
 
All this for about 521 grams — which at two to five  grams per execution would be enough to execute 260 people at most.
 
California has only executed 13 people since the death penalty’s reinstatement in 1976, so 260 seems like overkill.
 
Looking at all of this, it really seems far more complex than it needs to be. We are pulling in both state and international politics simply so we can execute some of the worst people in the country.
 
What happens when all sources of sodium thiopental either disappear or refuse to sell it to the prison systems? While some states may follow Oklahoma or Ohio’s example and switch to other drugs like pentobarbital, others would encounter legislative problems in trying to make such a change.
 
Additionally, who’s to say the companies who produce pentobarbital won’t simply refuse to make it down the line just like Hospira? The international community, particularly in Europe, does not support the death penalty like we do, so a foreign source is not always guaranteed.
 
While I may be against the death penalty in general, if we have to utilize it, then we should at least use a procedure that doesn’t rely on so many external sources. I also do not see how a death by lethal injection is any less cruel or unusual than a beheading, electric chair or noose death would be if done correctly.
 
If we can’t make prisoners truly suffer for their crimes, then we should at least try to not make our country suffer while getting rid of them.
 
Zachary Davis is a 20-year-old history junior from Warsaw, Poland. Follow him at Twitter @TDR_zdavis.
 
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