California prison officials are trying to keep possession of a scarce lethal injection drug, contesting a federal court order making it illegal to use "foreign manufactured" sodium thiopental.
In late 2010, California was one of several states scrambling for thiopental, an anesthetic and part of a three-drug cocktail for lethal injections, when the domestic pharmaceutical manufacturer ran out of supplies. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation purchased the drug from Dream Pharma, a one-man wholesaler that operated out of the back of a London driving school. Prison officials in Tennessee, Arizona, South Carolina and Georgia did the same.
The Food and Drug Administration allowed the states to import the thiopental - including 521 grams of the drug for California - in January 2011, arguing that execution-drug regulation is not its job.
A group of prisoners on death row filed a lawsuit against the FDA to force the agency to include lethal injection drugs within its jurisdiction. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon agreed and in March ruled that the federal agency had to confiscate the thiopental purchased from Dream Pharma.
"Here, the threatened injury that unapproved foreign thiopental will fail to anesthetize plaintiffs properly during execution, causing conscious suffocation, pain, and cardiac arrest is, to say the least, severe," Leon wrote. "Indeed, few in our society are more vulnerable than a death row inmate facing lethal injection."
Leon called the thiopental from Dream Pharma "misbranded" and "unapproved" in his order.
At the urging of state prison officials, the FDA filed paperwork last week indicating that it intends to appeal Leon's ruling.
Federal law is written so that the FDA can prevent drug abuse and illicit distribution of controlled substances, Benjamin Rice, an attorney for the California corrections department, said in a letter to the agency on May 1. "These purposes would not be served or advanced by a strained interpretation making (drug-control laws) applicable to a state's execution statutes or protocols," Rice wrote.
Regardless, the agency still aims to follow the court order and confiscate California's thiopental, said Domenic Veneziano, director of import operations and policy at the FDA.
Sodium thiopental is a common anesthetic, useful for rendering patients unconscious during general surgery and deemed a core medicine by the World Health Organization.
The California corrections department had its supply tested independently, finding the drug meets quality standards. The lab report states that pharmacological potency of tested doses was 93.7 percent, with acceptably low levels of heavy metals and impurities.
The sodium thiopental expires in March 2014, according to the drug's label.
The state may never get to use the thiopental.
Another federal court order halted executions in California six years ago over problems with its execution facility and protocols. In November, the state's voters will decide whether to end the death penalty all together. A ballot measure - called the The Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act - would convert death sentences for more than 700 prisoners to life terms and remove execution as a penalty going forward.
View this story on California Watch
Source: www.bnd.com
California death row prisoner's suicide is 20th since capital punishment reinstated - myfoxny.com
Source: NewsCore
SAN QUENTIN, Calif. -- A California death row prisoner has hanged himself in his cell, becoming the 20th to have taken their own life since the state reintroduced capital punishment in 1978.James Lee Crummel, 68, was found dead about 4:00pm Sunday in his cell at San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco in California's Bay Area, the Los Angeles Times reported.
His death means 20 inmates have committed suicide on death row in the past 34 years, while just 13 have been executed, the Times said, citing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Another 57 have died of natural causes while awaiting execution.
Crummel was sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of 13-year-old James Wilfred Trotter, sexually abusing and killing him after abducting him in Costa Mesa.
By the time he was sentenced for the crime in 2004, Crummel was already imprisoned for other molestation offenses.
Read More: California death row prisoner's suicide is 20th since capital punishment reinstated
Source: www.myfoxny.com
California high-speed rail board votes to hire new CEO - Sacramento Bee
The California High-Speed Rail Authority voted Tuesday to hire as its new chief executive a former Caltrans director who now works for a leading private contractor on the state rail project.
Pending contract negotiations, Jeff Morales will replace Roelof van Ark, who resigned from the troubled rail authority earlier this year.
The rail board is seeking legislative approval this summer to start construction of a $68 billion high-speed rail line in California. Parsons Brinckerhoff, for whom Morales is a senior vice president, has a $199 million contract to manage the project for the state.
Morales, director of Caltrans under Gov. Gray Davis, was previously executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority, and he was a member of President Barack Obama's post-election transition team.
Dan Richard, chairman of the rail board, said the rail authority would benefit from Morales' experience at Parsons.
At a critical time for the project, Richard said, "We weren't eager to issue learners permits to people to come in and figure out about the project, or about California."
Critics questioned the authority's ties to its leading contractor.
"It's difficult to believe that Mr. Morales can be counted on to drive a hard bargain with the company that has been paying his salary," state Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said in a statement. "The people who are planning the project are those that stand to profit, and it's looking very much like an inside job."
Source: www.sacbee.com
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