OKLAHOMA (USA): GOV. MARY FALLIN SIGNS LEGISLATION GIVING STATE MORE FLEXIBILITY IN LETHAL INJECTION DRUGS

April 18, 2011: Gov. Mary Fallin has signed into law legislation that will give prison officials more flexibility when choosing which lethal drugs to use to administer the death penalty in Oklahoma.
The bill received final passage in the Senate last week and was signed today by Fallin.
The measure clarifies that the death penalty is to be carried out by administering a lethal quantity of a "drug or drugs" instead of specifying which drugs are to be used.
Oklahoma has used the anesthetic sodium thiopental as the first in a three-drug formula since it adopted lethal injection as its method of execution in 1990. But after a nationwide shortage of the drug last year, Oklahoma substituted pentobarbital, a barbiturate similar to one used to euthanize animals. (Sources: The Associated Press, 18/04/2011)