From the daily La Stampa (accessed online at the http://www.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/esteri/201009articoli/58986girata.asp 30/09/2010)
The Executioner ended the poison
The Hall of executions in Virginia
existing stocks of barbiturates: execution suspended. And in the country are growing doubts
LORENZO SORIA
LOS ANGELES The execution had been scheduled for 9 pm hour today in California, six in the morning on Friday in Italy, in a room of the infamous San Quentin prison. A 30 years since Albert Greenwood Brown raped and then killed a girl of 15 years, Brown was time for the lethal injection, the first execution in California in the last five years. But it will not happen. The usual last-minute legal technicality? A rethink moral governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, the reason is that that was the only dose of Pentotal, conceived as an anesthetic and a barbiturate to induce coma in medical patients, has expired. And you can not get new doses because Hospira, the only pharmaceutical company that produces the Pentotal, he has no supplies of sodium thiopental, one of its active ingredients, and did not know it until March of Thin next. Indeed, even that goal might saltare.Per Brown, and others sentenced to death 708 guests from various prisons in California, means that the time of their execution leaves. But the problem does not affect a state ruled by Schwarzenegger. In other states of America between now and the end of the year there are 17 more ready condemned the execution, but even they will be spared for lack of valid doses of Penthiotal. In Virginia, in particular, the last available dose was injected last week on Teresa Lewis, the first woman killed in the U.S. in five years, and now there is more. In Kentucky they have only one dose with a maturity of October 1, Arizona and even then execution scheduled for 26 that month will be postponed to strength. In Oklahoma there is also a situation that if there were half a life and death and senseless violence, and victims may be the subject of a dark comedy: there are two ready sentenced to execution, but a single dose and their lawyers have flooded orders of the courts to determine who should die first, with the result that for now they are both still alive. "A macabre form of Russian roulette," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, based in Washington.Dopo years of debate and political battles and legal effectiveness and ethics of the death sentence, the controversial practice came to a stop totale non per sollevamento popolare o perché la Corte Suprema ha cambiato idea e l’ha dichiarata illegale ma per una questione all’apparenza banale: perché non c’e più un metodo approvato dalla legge per portare a termine le esecuzioni. La Hospira ha spiegato l’interruzione della produzione del suo farmaco letale col fatto che ha perso l’unico fornitore del suo ingrediente attivo, il sodio thiopental. E non può trovarne un altro? Non ce ne sono, dicono alla Hospira, sospettata dai difensori della pena capitale di avere volutamente messo dei paletti tra le ruote. La prova? Un comunicato in cui la casa farmaceutica ha dichiarato che produce il Pentotal perché «salva o migliora le vite» e che comunque «non is for capital punishment. "An alternative would be to use the reserve of the hospitals, but here the request would clash with the code of ethics for doctors, who can not mix with the death sentence. And then the Pentotal is a bit 'outdated hospitals now use more modern drugs. It could not do the same for the various states to complete their executions? Also here is not so easy, a new method must be approved by the federal and state courts and then by their legislatures, and in any case should be subjected to the necessary tests. So the machinery of capital punishment has stopped, awaiting the return of sodium thiopental on the market scheduled for March 2011. Or maybe no.California, the court blocks the boia.Un federal judge in California blocked the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown, a black 56 year old convicted of killing a girl in 1982. The judge expressed doubts on the injection lethal. According to the magistrate is impossible to determine by tomorrow, the day of execution, if the new rules on lethal injections, which can not be painful, comply with the law. If Brown was killed was the 14th victim of the Executioner from 1977
The Hall of executions in Virginia
existing stocks of barbiturates: execution suspended. And in the country are growing doubts
LORENZO SORIA
LOS ANGELES The execution had been scheduled for 9 pm hour today in California, six in the morning on Friday in Italy, in a room of the infamous San Quentin prison. A 30 years since Albert Greenwood Brown raped and then killed a girl of 15 years, Brown was time for the lethal injection, the first execution in California in the last five years. But it will not happen. The usual last-minute legal technicality? A rethink moral governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, the reason is that that was the only dose of Pentotal, conceived as an anesthetic and a barbiturate to induce coma in medical patients, has expired. And you can not get new doses because Hospira, the only pharmaceutical company that produces the Pentotal, he has no supplies of sodium thiopental, one of its active ingredients, and did not know it until March of Thin next. Indeed, even that goal might saltare.Per Brown, and others sentenced to death 708 guests from various prisons in California, means that the time of their execution leaves. But the problem does not affect a state ruled by Schwarzenegger. In other states of America between now and the end of the year there are 17 more ready condemned the execution, but even they will be spared for lack of valid doses of Penthiotal. In Virginia, in particular, the last available dose was injected last week on Teresa Lewis, the first woman killed in the U.S. in five years, and now there is more. In Kentucky they have only one dose with a maturity of October 1, Arizona and even then execution scheduled for 26 that month will be postponed to strength. In Oklahoma there is also a situation that if there were half a life and death and senseless violence, and victims may be the subject of a dark comedy: there are two ready sentenced to execution, but a single dose and their lawyers have flooded orders of the courts to determine who should die first, with the result that for now they are both still alive. "A macabre form of Russian roulette," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, based in Washington.Dopo years of debate and political battles and legal effectiveness and ethics of the death sentence, the controversial practice came to a stop totale non per sollevamento popolare o perché la Corte Suprema ha cambiato idea e l’ha dichiarata illegale ma per una questione all’apparenza banale: perché non c’e più un metodo approvato dalla legge per portare a termine le esecuzioni. La Hospira ha spiegato l’interruzione della produzione del suo farmaco letale col fatto che ha perso l’unico fornitore del suo ingrediente attivo, il sodio thiopental. E non può trovarne un altro? Non ce ne sono, dicono alla Hospira, sospettata dai difensori della pena capitale di avere volutamente messo dei paletti tra le ruote. La prova? Un comunicato in cui la casa farmaceutica ha dichiarato che produce il Pentotal perché «salva o migliora le vite» e che comunque «non is for capital punishment. "An alternative would be to use the reserve of the hospitals, but here the request would clash with the code of ethics for doctors, who can not mix with the death sentence. And then the Pentotal is a bit 'outdated hospitals now use more modern drugs. It could not do the same for the various states to complete their executions? Also here is not so easy, a new method must be approved by the federal and state courts and then by their legislatures, and in any case should be subjected to the necessary tests. So the machinery of capital punishment has stopped, awaiting the return of sodium thiopental on the market scheduled for March 2011. Or maybe no.California, the court blocks the boia.Un federal judge in California blocked the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown, a black 56 year old convicted of killing a girl in 1982. The judge expressed doubts on the injection lethal. According to the magistrate is impossible to determine by tomorrow, the day of execution, if the new rules on lethal injections, which can not be painful, comply with the law. If Brown was killed was the 14th victim of the Executioner from 1977
