On August 15, 2011, an Arkansas judge ruled that certain sections of the state's execution law are unconstitutional. The question revolved around the wide allowance of drugs used in the lethal injections. Arkansas had been obtaining their supply of sodium thiopental, a drug used in the lethal injection process, from overseas due to the shortage of the drug in the US. Several states, including Texas, had similar issues with their sodium thiopental supplies for lethal injections. Some states surrendered their supplies of the drug to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for investigations of the processes used to import the drug.



Learn more about issues surrounding the drugs used in lethal injections from the JURIST news archive.