Ohio adopting a new one-drug lethal injection protocol

Big news for lethal injection fans from my home state: as detailed in this local report, “Ohio will switch to a single drug instead of a three-drug cocktail in its new execution procedure, according to documents filed in federal court this morning.”  Here are more details:

Executions will use a single drug, thiopental sodium, “in an amount sufficient to cause death,” Attorney General Richard Cordray’s office said in filing in U.S. District Court in Columbus.  The drug is an anesthetic.  The new procedure will be in place by Nov 30.

The new procedure is similar to one used in euthanizing pets: a massive dose of an anesthetic.  The drug is also sometimes used in medically-induced comas.  Ohio will be the first state in the U.S. to use the one-drug procedure.

The state filing also listed a new backup procedure, if the first one doesn’t work or can’t be used.  The backup method involves an injection with a needle into a large muscle such as the arm or upper thigh.  It was described as “much like a flu shot.”  One of the drugs to be used is Dilaud, a commonly used painkiller.

“I have full confidence that this protocol will allow my staff the ability to fulfill our legally mandated obligation in carrying out the execution process for the state of Ohio,” said Terry Collins, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction….

Ohio would become the first state to make major changes in a three-drug execution process that was essentially copied by 35 states from Oklahoma, where it was developed by an anesthesiologist in 1977.

Seems like Friday afternoon is a bad time to do away with cocktails, but I guess Ohio thinks a shot straight up will now be adequate to do the trick.  (Sorry for the gallows humor, but it is hard to resist on a Friday afternoon.)  In all seriousness, this is big news in the lethal injection protocol debates, and it will be interesting to see how it is received among those who have been most vocal in their objections to the old cocktail approach.

UPDATE:  I was able to get a copy of the new Ohio lethal injection plan submitted in federal court today.  That plan appears as an appendix to a motion in Ohio’s on-going lethal injection litigation, and all of this can be downloaded here: Download Ohio new lethal injection plan