Tennessee may change execution method

Drug shortage means TN must change its method of execution or drop the death penalty

Tennessee has 86 killers on death row and no way to execute them after the state’s supply of a key lethal injection drug was seized by the federal government.

Now, Tennessee has to make a death penalty decision.

If it doesn’t change its lethal injection drug or the legislature doesn’t pass a law allowing the state to use alternative means of executions — electrocution, hanging, gas chamber or some other method — death row inmates will remain indefinitely imprisoned and families of murder victims will be left waiting for final punishment to be meted out.

“It’s extremely frustrating. We are carrying on our lives, but it’s just such a heavy burden,” said Misti Ellis, whose father, Jerry Hopper, was killed in a shooting rampage in 2005 in Jackson. “I hope that it’s a procedural bump in the road. I hope they can find some way to resolve it or find a new method. I certainly would not want to see, for myself or any other family that feels the same way, to have that changed because of a supply problem.”

Hopper’s killer, David Jordan, 47, is second in line to be executed this year. He is scheduled to die Sept. 27.

In less than five months, the state is set to start executing death row inmates like Jordan again. But a nationwide shortage of that key drug used in lethal injections has largely ground to a halt executions across the nation. Like other states, Tennessee has had to turn over its stock of sodium thiopental to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration because of allegations it may have been illegally obtained from an unregulated overseas supplier.

Neither Gov. Bill Haslam’s office or the Tennessee Department of Correction would say what the state would do to fix the state’s death penalty quandary.

“The commissioner isn't prepared to discuss what will happen next. He is still reviewing our options,” said Dorinda Carter, spokeswoman for the Department of Correction. When asked about those options, she responded, “He’s not ready to discuss them at this point.”

Source: The Tennessean, April 17, 2011

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