04 December 2010 :

Arizona Supreme Court puts off date for execution. The Arizona Supreme Court postponed setting an execution date for Daniel Wayne Cook until the state answers defense questions about how it obtained sodium thiopental. The Arizona Attorney General's Office had requested a death warrant to execute Cook. The state Supreme Court turned down the request, instead ordering the state to respond to concerns raised by Cook's defense attorneys about the origin of the state's supply of sodium thiopental and other matters before it will reconsider. In its tersely worded order, the Arizona Supreme Court gave Arizona until Dec. 30 to respond to Cook's legal memoranda seeking to block his execution. Cook has filed suit in federal court to force disclosure of the source of the thiopental. Cook, 49, was convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for killing a man with whom he shared an apartment and was sentenced to die in 1988. The state has acknowledged that the drug supply came from Britain, but the Attorney General's Office has refused to say how or from whom it obtained the drug and how it was brought into the U.S. Because the drug is a controlled substance, its importation generally would be subject to regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. However, the FDA said recently that there is no mechanism for importing the drug. At issue is whether states can sidestep those agencies to import the drug for executions.