US death row injection comes from Mumbai firm

MUMBAI: Correctional services in the US are buying sodium thiopental from a little-known firm in Borivli (West) for use in lethal injections to execute death sentences.

Kayem Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd, at Marian Colony, shipped a 500-gram consignment of the yellow powder, packed in a hefty 25-kg strongbox, on December 8, 2010, to the Nebraska department of correctional services. Sodium thiopental is generally used along with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride to create a cocktail with which several states in the US carry out the death sentence by lethal injection. In February this year, Kayem sold another consignment to the South Dakota department of corrections. Executions are yet to be carried out by Nebraska or South Dakota with the drug purchased from Kayem.

Sodium thiopental has been in short supply in the US for about a year after the sole American company that manufactured it ceased production. That has forced American prisons to look abroad. For Nebraska and South Dakota, that search led to the residential Greenfield Cooperative Housing Society in Borivli (West), where Kayem is located. Kayem is a two-room set-up — office and storeroom — with a balcony that doubles as a kitchen.

American prisons have taken flak for purchasing sodium thiopental, used in lethal injections, from overseas. An earlier purchase from the UK apparently degraded by the time it reached American shores, said Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, an international charity assisting people around the world facing the death penalty. "The failure of the sodium thiopental purchased in the UK has thus far caused the excruciating and torturous death of three people, one in Arizona and two in Georgia," Smith said.

That prompted a lawyer in Nebraska — where the execution of Carey Dean Moore, 53, is pending — to move court there against the use of the sodium thiopental bought from Kayem. There were also questions raised about whether Kayem is properly registered in the US.

Officials in the Nebraska corrections department did not respond to queries emailed by this newspaper. However, replying to the court in the Nebraska case, state solicitor-general J Kirk Brown said: "The state of Nebraska has duly enacted a new statutory method of execution (lethal injection) and adopted an execution protocol pursuant to the statute, which together satisfy all currently understood requirements of our state and federal constitutions."

Kayem, a small-scale Indian company, may now be in a position to increase its business. "Several American states have now approached us for sodium thiopental," said Navneet Verma, director, Kayem Pharmaceuticals. Verma said he sold the first consignment of 500 grams to the Nebraska correctional services at $3.50 a gram. That works out to $1,750, or around Rs 78,000. When officials at the South Dakota department of corrections evinced interest to buy the same drug, Kayem jacked the price up to $10 a gram.

Derived by mixing sodium and thiopentone, the drug sodium thiopental doesn't really require a huge facility to manufacture and goes for around Rs 35 a gram in the Indian market.

Source: The Times of India, April 5, 2011

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Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck votes to continue supplying pentobarbital for lethal injections

Danish manufacturer Lundbeck has today missed a major and historic opportunity to change the face of the U.S. capital punishment system. By choosing not to put measures in place to prevent its drugs being used to kill people, the company has opened its doors to executioners all over the country.

Lundbeck and its shareholders will now be responsible for potentially hundreds of deaths, as executing states snap up Lundbeck’s pentobarbital, a dangerous and experimental lethal injection drug, to kill prisoners.

Recent shortages of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental have forced prisons in Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio to abandon the standard three-drug protocol used by the majority of executing states, turning instead to pentobarbital as an untested alternative. As the only licensed supplier of pentobarbital in the United States, Lundbeck has the power to halt countless executions by putting in place ‘end-user agreements’ with its customers. Such agreements would stop intermediaries selling Lundbeck’s chemicals on to state penitentiaries, thus preventing Danish drugs from ending up in the veins of condemned prisoners.

According to a source within Lundbeck, the company’s managers were so afraid that their distributors would not like their amended contracts that they decided to avoid taking action.

Lundbeck’s decision will open the floodgates in terms of encouraging executing states to adopt pentobarbital for use in executions. The method is considered highly dangerous because the drug, a sedative, was not designed for executions and has no clinical history of such use.

Reprieve Investigator Maya Foa said:

“By refusing to alter their contracts, Lundbeck has effectively elected to become the primary supplier of drugs for U.S. executions. They have consistently declared their desire not to facilitate capital punishment, and yet presented with the opportunity to turn their words into deeds, they have rejected it. This is an extremely disappointing and cowardly response.”

For more information please contact Katherine O’Shea at Reprieve’s Press Office katherine.oshea@reprieve.org.uk / 020 7427 1099 / 07931592674.

Background:

In the summer of 2010, the only US manufacturer of execution drug sodium thiopental, Hospira, ceased production of the substance due to a shortage of raw materials, forcing Departments of Corrections in executing states to source their drugs from overseas. Reprieve discovered that a company in Britain was supplying these chemicals and set out to stop British complicity in executions. The approved execution protocol in the United States consists of a cocktail of three drugs: sodium thiopental (also known as thiopental sodium and pentothal) supposedly anaesthetizes the victim, before pancuronium bromide paralyses the muscles and potassium chloride stops the heart.

On 25th October 2010, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed in Arizona using sodium thiopental imported from Britain. The lawyers of Edmund Zagorski, a man who has spent 28 years of his life on death row in Tennessee, subsequently contacted Reprieve with the information that the Tennessee Department of Corrections was seeking to purchase their own supply of sodium thiopental from the same company. Reprieve and lawyers Leigh Day & Co contacted members of the government, asking them to put in place emergency measures to prevent the export of the chemical, and thus stay Edmund's execution. Business Secretary Vince Cable and Jeremy Browne MP on behalf of the FCO declined to take such a step.

Reprieve therefore filed for judicial review of the government’s failure to prevent British complicity in executions. Counsel for the government initially argued that it was not worth imposing an export ban as executing states would source their sodium thiopental from elsewhere, but on 29th November Vince Cable finally agreed to put in place a system of controls making it illegal to export sodium thiopental from the UK to the US.

Shortly afterwards, Reprieve discovered that the British company responsible was Dream Pharma, a tiny pharmaceutical wholesalers operating out of the back of a driving academy in Acton, and that it had already exported a substantial quantity of sodium thiopental – as well as the other two lethal injection chemicals – before the ban came into force. We asked Matt Alavi, the Managing Director of Dream Pharma, for his help in mitigating the damage done by his quest for profit; he had been selling sodium thiopental for between six and twelve times its recommended price, knowing that it was to be used in lethal injections. Mr Alavi refused, and the drugs he supplied have already been used to kill three people: Brandon Rhode and Emanuel Hammond in Georgia, as well as Jeffrey Landrigan.

Disturbingly, it seems that Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental may not have been properly effective as an anaesthetic, and that Brandon and Emanuel may therefore have been in agony during their executions. Dr Mark Heath, a renowned lethal injection expert, filed a sworn declaration stating that the fact that Brandon's eyes remained open throughout his execution was highly unusual and strongly suggested that he was not properly anaesthetized and therefore conscious throughout the process. He also wrote that:

“...if the thiopental was inadequately effective Mr Rhode’s death would certainly have been agonizing; there is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonizing in the absence of adequate anesthesia.”

Reprieve is currently asking Business Secretary Vince Cable to put in place strict measures regulating the export of pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride from the UK. We are also asking the governments of Austria and Germany, where sodium thiopental and its active ingredients are still manufactured, to follow Britain in imposing a full export ban on the drug. Hospira, which originally intended to begin manufacturing sodium thiopental destined for American penitentiaries in an Italian factory, announced in January that it would be ceasing all production of the drug.

The use of pentobarbital in executions is experimental and considered highly dangerous because the drug, a sedative, was not designed to be used as an anaesthetic. According to Dr. David Waisel, Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School: “The use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anesthesia has no clinical history and is non-standard… the combination of significant unknowns… puts the inmate at risk of serious undue pain and suffering.”

About Reprieve:

Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 27 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.

Reprieve has represented, and continues to represent, a large number of prisoners who have been rendered and abused around the world, and is conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of ‘ghost prisoners’ in the so-called ‘war on terror.’

Reprieve

PO Box 52742

London EC4P 4WS

Email: info@reprieve.org.uk

Website: www.reprieve.org.uk

Source: Reprieve, March 25, 2011

Contact Lundbeck,  send an email (contact@lundbeck.com) and/or sign an online petition demanding Lundbeck's widthdrawal of execution drug.

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Execution of 3 Filipinos on China death row set March 30

Chinese mobile execution unit
training for lethal injection

The 3 Filipino drugs mules on death row in China will be executed by lethal injection next Wednesday, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

Despite winning a rare reprieve following a high-level Philippine lobby, the death sentences on Ramon Credo, 42, Elizabeth Batain, 38, and Sally Villanueva, 32, will be carried out, the DFA said Wednesday.

"On the same day" Credo and Villanueva will be executed in Xiamen while the death penalty on Batain will be carried out in Shenzhen, said DFA spokesman J. Eduardo Malaya at a news conference.

The three, who were convicted of heroin smuggling in 2008, were due to have been put to death last February 20 and 21 but was put on hold after Vice President Jejomar Binay went to Beijing on February 18 to seek mercy.

Philippine authorities had gone to great lengths in a bid to save the Filipinos and made repeated appeals for their sentences to be commuted to life in jail.

But the Chinese embassy in Manila last week dashed hopes for clemency, saying, “The verdict is a final verdict.”

The DFA said Manila will respect the final ruling of China’s high tribunal.

"The government respects the Chinese law and the finality of the verdict of the Chinese People's Court," Malaya told reporters.

President Benigno Aquino last week acknowledged that from the start, the government was told that the stay of execution of the 3 Filipinos was temporary, and “we have to conform to their laws."

’All possible assistance'

The DFA said it provided “all possible legal and consular assistance” to the 3 Filipinos.

“The government ensured that their legal rights were respected and observed, and their welfare protected from the time of their arrests and throughout the judicial process, and even up to this very day,” it said.

The government had insisted that the 3 were from poor families and were duped into becoming drug mules by crime gangs.

The 3 are among 227 Filipinos jailed for drugs offenses in China. Of the total, 72 have received the death penalty with possible commutation, 38 meted life imprisonment, 78 sentenced to 15 years in prison and 35 currently on trial. Only 6 cases have reached the Supreme Court — 2 sentences overturned, 3 affirmed and 1 still being reviewed.

The DFA reiterated its warning for Filipinos “not to allow themselves to be victimized by international drug syndicates."

“We wish to stress that vigilance is the first major step in combating the modus operandi of international drug traffickers,” it said. “We urge all our citizens to be on alert at all times in order not to be victimized by drug syndicates."

Doomed loved ones

The DFA said the families of the Filipinos had been informed of the impending executions and will leave for China over the weekend to see their doomed loved ones for the last time.

Credo, 42, a father of 5 children, was arrested on December 28, 2008, at Gaoji International Airport in Xiamen after getting off a China Southern Airlines flight from Manila. A total of 4,113 grams of heroin was found in his luggage and he was formally charged with drug smuggling on January 21, 2009.

Credo is being held at Xiamen No. 1 Detention House, as is Villanueva, 32.

Villanueva, a mother of 2, was apprehended on December 24, 2008, also at Gaoji International Airport, upon arrival on China Southern Airlines flight from Manila. She was found with 4,410 grams of heroin in her suitcase. Villanueva was formally charged with drug smuggling on January 23, 2009.

Batain, 38, was arrested on May 25, 2008, at the Shenzhen airport after disembarking from an Asiana Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur. A total of 6,800 grams of heroin was found “sealed inside two reams of bond paper inside her luggage.” She was charged with drug trafficking on June 30, 2009. She is being held at Shenzhen No. 3 Detention House.

Smuggling more than 50 grams of heroin or other drugs is punishable by death in China. The Philippines has no death penalty.

Jayson Ordinario, a younger brother of one of the two women, said that his sister was hired as a cellphone dealer in Xiamen and was tricked into carrying a bag that had a secret compartment loaded with heroin allegedly by her job recruiter.

Last-ditch effort

Aquino had earlier written to Chinese President Hun Jintao appealing for clemency.

In another move seeking to spare Filipinos on death row in China, Aquino did not send a representative to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in December honoring a jailed Chinese dissident. Manila also deported to Beijing last month 14 Taiwanese facing fraud charges in China despite protests from Taipei.

The Chinese ambassador said the criminal cases should not harm ties between Manila and Beijing.

"I don't want our wonderful relations to be kidnapped by these drug criminals," Liu said.

Source: Philippine Inquirer, March 23, 2011

Statement of the Department of Foreign Affairs, 23 March 2011

The Fujian People's Court and Guangdong High People's Court have informed the Philippine Consulates General in Xiamen and Guangzhou on the date of the carrying out of the death penalty on 3 Filipino nationals, namely Mr. Ramon Credo, Miss Elizabeth Batain and Miss Sally Villanueva.

The death penalty will be carried out on March 30 on Mr. Credo and Ms. Villanueva in Xiamen and on Ms. Batain in Shenzhen.

These are the Filipinos whose sentences were originally scheduled on February 20 and 21, but were stayed as a result of the humanitarian visit to Beijing of Vice President Jejomar Binay on February 18.

It may be recalled that during the visit of the Vice President, the Philippines conveyed that it "respects Chinese law and the (final) verdict of the Supreme People's Court" on these cases.

As the public is well aware, the Philippine Government provided the three Filipinos all possible legal and consular assistance. The Government ensured that their legal rights were respected and observed, and their welfare protected from the time of their arrests and throughout the judicial process, and even up to this very day.

Their families have been informed of the carrying out of the sentences, and arrangements are being made for them to depart for China during the weekend, in order to visit and see their loved ones.

The Philippine Government itself has a strong anti-illegal drug policy, and is closely cooperating with law enforcement agencies in China and in other countries on efforts against drug trafficking.

We appeal to all Filipinos, especially OFWs, not to allow themselves to be victimized by international drug syndicates and to be extremely cautious when dealing with strangers in airports and other areas of transit. We wish to stress that vigilance is the first major step in combating the modus operandi of international drug traffickers. We urge all our citizens to be on alert at all times in order not to be victimized by drug syndicates.

We hope that the members of the media will help the Government in its campaign to fight drug trafficking.

Source: Department of Foreign Affairs, March 23, 2011
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British drugs linked with third botched execution

Jeffrey Landrigan is revealed to have died in agony in Arizona

A third American prisoner has suffered an excruciating death after an anaesthetic supplied by British drug company Dream Pharma apparently failed during the lethal injection procedure in Arizona.

In a sworn statement for Reprieve’s pending High Court action, lawyer and eyewitness Dale Baich states that Jeffrey Landrigan’s eyes remained open during the lethal injection process. This is a rare phenomenon and a key indicator that the anaesthetic, sodium thiopental, has failed.

Reprieve has now established that all three prisoners executed using Dream Pharma sodium thiopental have kept their eyes open. Emmanuel Hammond and Brandon Rhode in Georgia both appeared awake when they should have been unconscious, while Hammond repeatedly grimaced in pain.

There are increasingly urgent concerns over the efficacy of British sodium thiopental, supplied by a one-man wholesaler operating out of the back of an Acton driving academy. Following last year’s nationwide shortage in the US, Dream Pharma shipped the drug to prisons in Georgia, California, South Carolina, Arkansas and Arizona at dramatically inflated prices. The thiopental was sent via FedEx under uncontrolled conditions despite the fact that the drug degrades at temperatures above 26 degrees Celsius. Experts suggest that either the storage conditions in Acton or the shipping process could be responsible for the drug’s failure.

Reprieve has begun legal proceedings against British pharmaceutical regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), for refusing to recall all Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental in the face of clear risk that the drug is faulty. If successful, the case may halt executions in Arizona and many other states indefinitely.

Expert witnesses in the pending legal action have stated that prisoners normally lapse into deep unconsciousness within 10-12 seconds of sodium thiopental reaching their bloodstream. Dr Mark Heath, a consultant anaesthetist at Columbia hospital in New York, states that the prisoner’s eyes should remain closed and his body motionless. If not, this would indicate “an agonising death… asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonising in the absence of adequate anaesthesia”. Dr Heath’s affidavit states that the recent executions are “highly atypical… based on my studies of lethal injection, it is very unusual and surprising for a prisoner’s eyes to remain open after the efficacious administration of thiopental. One explanation is that thiopental lacked efficacy”. Rev Carroll Pickett, who has attended 95 executions as a prison chaplain in Texas, has said that on the very few occasions when he observed that a prisoner “did not lose consciousness almost immediately… it was due to the thiopental being close to or possibly past its expiration date”.

Three witnesses to the execution of Emanuel Hammond have expressed concern about the process. Professor Sheri Johnson, who watched particularly intently because she knew there were doubts over the British thiopental’s efficacy, said “he closed his eyes perhaps ten seconds after the drugs started. But then, some time later, he opened them again”. Professor Johnson added that this was quite unlike three thiopental executions she had seen before, when the prisoners closed their eyes very quickly and remained “totally still”, apparently in a coma. Josh Green, a reporter with the Gwinnett Daily Post, confirms that Hammond first closed, and then re-opened his eyes some time after receiving the thiopental, while Jill Rand, a Florida nurse who became Hammond’s pen friend, said she saw him move his lips.

Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said:

“Why does a regulator exist if not to prevent British drugs failing or, worse, causing pain to patients? It is difficult to see how much more evidence the MHRA needs in order to recall a faulty drug. If Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental is not taken out of circulation, more prisoners are likely to die in agony and the MHRA will bear responsibility for their ordeal.”

For more information please contact Katherine O’Shea at Reprieve’s Press Office katherine.oshea@reprieve.org.uk / 020 7427 1099/ 07931592674.

Background:

In the summer of 2010, the only US manufacturer of execution drug sodium thiopental, Hospira, ceased production of the substance due to a shortage of raw materials, forcing Departments of Corrections in executing states to source their drugs from overseas. Reprieve discovered that a company in Britain was supplying these chemicals and set out to stop British complicity in executions. The approved execution protocol in the United States consists of a cocktail of three drugs: sodium thiopental (also known as thiopental sodium and pentothal) supposedly anaesthetizes the victim, before pancuronium bromide paralyses the muscles and potassium chloride stops the heart.

On 25th October 2010, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed in Arizona using sodium thiopental imported from Britain. The lawyers of Edmund Zagorski, a man who has spent 28 years of his life on death row in Tennessee, subsequently contacted Reprieve with the information that the Tennessee Department of Corrections was seeking to purchase their own supply of sodium thiopental from the same company. Reprieve and lawyers Leigh Day & Co contacted members of the government, asking them to put in place emergency measures to prevent the export of the chemical, and thus stay Edmund's execution. Business Secretary Vince Cable and Jeremy Browne MP on behalf of the FCO declined to take such a step.

Reprieve therefore filed for judicial review of the government’s failure to prevent British complicity in executions. Counsel for the government initially argued that it was not worth imposing an export ban as executing states would source their sodium thiopental from elsewhere, but on 29th November Vince Cable finally agreed to put in place a system of controls making it illegal to export sodium thiopental from the UK to the US.

Shortly afterwards, Reprieve discovered that the British company responsible was Dream Pharma, a tiny pharmaceutical wholesalers operating out of the back of a driving academy in Acton, and that it had already exported a substantial quantity of sodium thiopental – as well as the other two lethal injection chemicals – before the ban came into force. We asked Matt Alavi, the Managing Director of Dream Pharma, for his help in mitigating the damage done by his quest for profit; he had been selling sodium thiopental for between six and twelve times its recommended price, knowing that it was to be used in lethal injections. Mr Alavi refused, and the drugs he supplied have already been used to kill three people: Brandon Rhode and Emanuel Hammond in Georgia, as well as Jeffrey Landrigan.

Disturbingly, it seems that Dream Pharma’s sodium thiopental may not have been properly effective as an anaesthetic, and that Brandon and Emanuel may therefore have been in agony during their executions. Dr Mark Heath, a renowned lethal injection expert, filed a sworn declaration stating that the fact that Brandon's eyes remained open throughout his execution was highly unusual and strongly suggested that he was not properly anaesthetized and therefore conscious throughout the process. He also wrote that:

“...if the thiopental was inadequately effective Mr Rhode’s death would certainly have been agonizing; there is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonizing in the absence of adequate anesthesia.”

Reprieve is currently asking Business Secretary Vince Cable to put in place strict measures regulating the export of pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride from the UK. We are also asking the governments of Austria and Germany, where sodium thiopental and its active ingredients are still manufactured, to follow Britain in imposing a full export ban on the drug. Hospira, which originally intended to begin manufacturing sodium thiopental destined for American penitentiaries in an Italian factory, announced in January that it would be ceasing all production of the drug. This was largely a consequence of Reprieve’s action, in particular a press conference in Rome in early December.

About Reprieve:

Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 27 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.

Reprieve has represented, and continues to represent, a large number of prisoners who have been rendered and abused around the world, and is conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of ‘ghost prisoners’ in the so-called ‘war on terror.’

Reprieve

PO Box 52742

London EC4P 4WS

Tel: 020 7353 4640

Fax: 020 7353 4641

Email: info@reprieve.org.uk

Website: www.reprieve.org.uk

Source: Reprieve, Feb. 24, 2011

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Managing Director Matt Alavi knew Dream Pharma drugs would be used to kill; prisoner due to die tomorrow with British drugs unless UK intervenes

Reprieve today reveals that British businessman Matt Alavi of Dream Pharma knew his drugs would be used to kill and expedited prison orders for that reason.

The US state of Georgia is poised to execute Emanuel Hammond using drugs knowingly and willingly supplied by Mr Alavi, who runs Dream Pharma out of the back of a driving academy in West London.

Newly released emails between Mr Alavi and Georgia, obtained in Georgia litigation, offer an insight into the extent of Dream Pharma’s culpability for deaths throughout the US prison system. Until today Mr Alavi has only admitted to sending one batch of execution drugs to Arizona’s State Prison Complex. It is now clear that Dream Pharma has been doing a brisk trade across the USA, quietly supplying Georgia and others with sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

Similarly, Mr Alavi denied that he knew what the drugs were being used for. However, today’s revelations prove that Mr Alavi was explicitly informed that his drugs were to be used for capital punishment and that he deliberately rushed through the prison orders for that reason, adding: “I am more than happy to assist”.

Reprieve urgently contacted Dream Pharma yesterday (Sunday) for help in staving off Emanuel’s execution, set for tomorrow (Tuesday) at 7pm EST, and received no response; Mr Alavi’s intransigence stands in stark contrast to the speed and efficiency with which he swung into action to expedite the export of his lethal product.

Dream Pharma has refused all cooperation with efforts to mitigate the damage caused by its pursuit of profit, despite Reprieve’s urgent pleas issued three times in writing and once in person. On Friday, Hospira, the sole US manufacturer of lethal injection drug sodium thiopental announced that it was permanently halting production of the drug in the face of overwhelming public pressure. Yet this will be too late for the prisoners, including Emanuel Hammond, whose drugs have already been dispatched by Dream Pharma.

Coincidentally, Reprieve’s director Clive Stafford Smith provided free representation 20 years ago to Emanuel Hammond immediately after he was convicted. Mr Hammond’s trial lawyer was so inept that he presented a defence suggesting that the police thought the crime had been committed by a “Mr Fanulanu” – not realizing that the reference, FNULNU, was a common way of writing “First Name Unknown, Last Name Unknown.”

While the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office sought to provide assistance over the weekend to help stave off Tuesday’s execution, other branches of government have fallen down badly on this issue. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills bears significant responsibility for Dream Pharma’s successful exports and the resulting deaths. Documents obtained by Reprieve over the weekend reflect that in the month when Business Secretary Vince Cable dallied after Reprieve’s October 26th demand that exports of sodium thiopental be banned, Dream Pharma exported more drugs (on November 5th), sufficient to take the lives of 85 prisoners. Neither did the BIS respond for three weeks to Reprieve’s request to intervene to prevent the shipment of British drugs being released by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Reprieve’s Director Clive Stafford Smith said: 

“Tomorrow a man is set to die thanks to Dream Pharma’s heartless pursuit of profit. The documentary evidence of Mr Alavi’s enthusiasm is chilling, but I wonder if he would be as keen if he were forced to watch his lethal drugs in action. It is not too late for Mr Alavi to come forward and help save Emanuel’s life.”

For more information please contact Katherine O’Shea: katherine.oshea@reprieve.org.uk / 07931592674 or Clive Stafford Smith: cstaffordsmith@gmail.com / 07940-347125.

Notes for Editors:

Background:

Dream Pharma Ltd, of 176 Horn Lane, London W3 6PJ, is a pharmaceutical company run by Matt Alavi. It operates from a rented space in the back of a driving instructor’s office, Elgone Driving Academy. On January 6, Reprieve released documentary proof that the Acton-based company sold drugs to Arizona that were used in the execution of Jeffrey Landrigan on October 26th, 2010, and that will send many other prisoners to their deaths. Mr Alavi sold 150 vials of sodium thiopental, 180 vials of potassium chloride, and 450 vials of pancuronium bromide to the Arizona State Prison on September 28th, 2010. This was sufficient to execute at least ten prisoners, and one has already died as a result. The sodium thiopental was sold for £1,180.50, a significant mark-up over the normal price in the US. The State of Arizona sought permission from the state supreme court on December 28th to go forward with the next prisoners in line for execution. Reprieve also revealed that before Arizona, the State of Arkansas bought drugs from the UK, though the precise quantity is not yet known. Furthermore, on 6th January an additional 1,042 vials of sodium thiopental (sufficient to execute 85 prisoners) were released to California by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), after importation from Dream Pharma on November 5th. Drugs bought by various states are thought to have been sourced from Dream Pharma, although the company has declined to confirm the fact, or produce the invoices. Various other states’ recent purchases of execution drugs from the UK remain secret.

The US ran short of sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide, two of the drugs used in the execution protocol. On Monday 25th October, Jeffrey Landrigan was executed in Arizona using drugs supplied by a British company (now revealed as Dream Pharma) – despite a plea for clemency from the judge who sentenced him to death. The Arizona consignment was sufficient for four executions, so the British drugs will contribute to three more deaths there.

Soon afterwards, the American lawyers for Edmund Zagorski contacted Reprieve with a plea for help: Tennessee was seeking to purchase the drugs to kill Mr Zagorski, apparently from the same British company. On Thursday 28th October, Reprieve and Leigh Day & Co contacted the Government, having previously asked for emergency measures to be taken to avoid British complicity in Mr Zagorski’s execution. On Monday 1st November Mr Cable announced that the British government would take no such step, because if the US did not get the drug from the UK it would just go elsewhere. Mr Cable also said he was unwilling to interfere unnecessarily in US-UK trade. On behalf of the FCO, Jeremy Browne took the same line.

On Tuesday 2nd November lawyers with Leigh Day filed a judicial review application of the government’s refusal to lift a hand to prevent British complicity in a series of American executions. The British government finally announced an export restriction on Monday 29th November.

New documents reveal that, meanwhile, Dream Pharma exported drugs on November 5th, sufficient to execute 85 people.

On 6th December the California authorities stated that they had imported the drugs from Archimedes Pharma and that the drugs were currently with the FDA in Washington DC:

State corrections officials today revealed how they obtained a scarce drug used in lethal injection executions, saying they received one small batch from Arizona officials and ordered another, larger batch from a British manufacturer. California corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said the first batch of 12 grams of sodium thiopental came from Arizona on Sept. 30 and that California was not charged for it. The second batch of 521 grams was ordered from Archimedes Pharma, a British company, and corrections officials paid $36,415 for it, she said. The shipment was approved by U.S. Customs officials and the Drug Enforcement Administration, Thornton said, and is now on hold on the East coast awaiting release by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "We have followed all the proper procedures," Thornton said. The origin of the drugs is the subject of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which won a court order requiring corrections officials to reveal where they got the drugs by Tuesday.The ACLU contends that it is illegal for corrections officials to use a foreign-produced drug in executions and the matter has become an international controversy. Britain last week tightened rules governing the export of the drug to the United States, a move that came after California made its purchase.

--- See Sam Stanton, California got execution drugs from Arizona, British sources, Sacramento Bee (Dec. 6, 2010), at http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/06/3237693/california-corrections-got-execution.html (accessed Dec. 7, 2010).

While the list cost of the drugs imported by California should under no circumstances be more than $1,000, California has paid $36,415 for its supply – a blood money mark up of 3,500%.

On 16th December, Reprieve brought to Business Secretary Vince Cable’s attention that Arizona had already sourced the other two execution drugs (pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride) from the UK, and was advising California on how to do the same. Reprieve asked for a ban on the export of these two drugs as well by 20th December. Cable’s office has provided no reply. Neither did the BIS apparently act on Reprieve’s request – made on December 7th – to intervene to ensure that the British drugs were not released to California by the US FDA. The FDA announcement on January 4th reveals that any intervention by Cable will now be too late.

On Friday 21st January, Hospira, the sole US manufacturer of lethal injection drug sodium thiopental announced that it was permanently halting production of the drug, potentially delaying executions across the USA. Hospira Inc. blamed pressure from the Italian government for their withdrawal from the market. Many US states ran short of sodium thiopental, the first in the three-drug lethal injection procedure, after a 2009 decision by Hospira to suspend production due to manufacturing issues. Hospira had planned to resume producing the drug in early 2011 at a factory in Liscate, Italy. But in December, the Italian parliament issued an order binding the government to ensure that Hospira's Italian-made thiopental would not be used for executions. Reprieve welcomed Hospira’s decision, but has urged them to monitor carefully the use of their other products. Hospira also manufactures pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride – the two other drugs in the lethal injection cocktail– and has been known to sell these drugs to prisons for use in executions. Reprieve asks that Hospira exit the lethal drug market altogether by refusing to sell any drugs to prisons where prisoners are executed, and urges other pharmaceutical manufacturing companies do the same.

Sodium thiopental is one of a cocktail of three drugs prescribed for use in lethal injections by US states which retain the death penalty. Sodium thiopental is supposed to anaesthetise the victim, before pancuronium bromide is used to paralyse him, and finally potassium chloride is used to induce a heart attack. Sodium thiopental is a bona fide anaesthetic and is included in the WHO list of essential medicines. However, it is old and has largely been superseded by more modern and efficacious drugs in western countries. Its use in the United States, other than for lethal injections, is confined to a few residual specialist areas. The only producer of the drug in the United States, Hospira, had ceased production due to a shortage of raw ingredients.

Reprieve, a legal action charity, uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. Reprieve promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 25 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA.

Reprieve’s current casework involves representing prisoners in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, working on behalf of prisoners facing the death penalty, and conducting ongoing investigations into the rendition and the secret detention of ‘ghost prisoners’ in the so-called ‘war on terror.’

Reprieve

PO Box 52742

London EC4P 4WS

Tel: 020 7353 4640

Fax: 020 7353 4641

Email: info@reprieve.org.uk

Website: www.reprieve.org.uk

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Clive Stafford Smith is the founder and Director of Reprieve.

Source: Reprieve, January 14, 2011