Denied access to sodium thiopental (Pentothal) through conventional channels, Nebraska prison officials, who needed the drug for the execution of two convicted murderers, turned to a pharmaceutical broker in India who was able to provide it.
Prison authorities made contact with the Indian middleman, who in turn obtained 500 vials of thiopental from a Swiss manufacturer -- dishonestly, according to attorneys for one of the condemned Nebraska inmates for whom the drug was intended.
Nebraska's attorney general, Jon Bruning, responded by releasing a sheaf of emails, letters, invoices, and shipping receipts detailing the transaction, which he said proved that the state had obtained the drug legally, though with considerable difficulty.
The episode illustrates the challenge faced by European governments and drug companies as they try to prevent their products from reaching death rows in the U.S.
Authorities in death-penalty states requiring lethal injections have run into mounting troubles in obtaining the necessary drugs, which normally include a powerful barbiturate sedative (thiopental or pentobarbital), a paralytic agent (pancuronium bromide), and potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest.
Neither thiopental nor pentobarbital are produced in the U.S. Most major suppliers are based in Europe, where opposition to capital punishment runs high. The European Union recently set policies intended to keep these agents from being used in U.S. executions, and manufacturers have begun to establish their own restricted distribution systems.
In fact, the thiopental shipment that Nebraska obtained last month came from a Swiss producer whose CEO has declared his opposition to the drug's use in executions.
That firm, Naari AG, has strong Indian connections. CEO Prithi Kochhar and other top officials are of Indian origin and the company does some of its manufacturing in India through an affiliate, Jagsonpal Pharmaceuticals.
Steve Urosevich, head of health services in Nebraska's corrections department, made contact with a broker based in the Indian city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) named Chris Harris, who in turn contracted with Jagsonpal to provide him with 500 1-gram vials of thiopental that he then shipped to Nebraska.
In an email to Urosevich, Harris apologized for requiring that the state buy so much -- enough to kill each of Nebraska's 10 death-row inmates 10 times over, at a total cost of about $5,400.
"This is just to cover my legal expences [sic] as I am 100% sure Reprive [sic, a U.K.-based death penalty opponent group] will be filing a case against my company although in the end I will win it, but it is a very long drawn and expensive affair," Harris wrote.
Two condemned prisoners, Michael Ryan and Carey Dean Moore, have exhausted their appeals and are awaiting execution dates from Nebraska's Supreme Court.
In recent filings with the court, attorneys for Ryan argued that the thiopental shipment was obtained under false pretenses and that therefore it could not be used in executions.
They cited assertions by Kochhar that the firm believed the thiopental was being sent to Africa for testing. A shipping manifest indicated that the drug was labeled "not for sale" when it was delivered to Harris.
None of the documents released by Bruning indicated that Harris had told Naari or Jagsonpal that he planned to reship the drug to Nebraska prison officials, or indeed anything about his intentions.
Bruning asserted in a court filing that there was nothing illegal or dishonest about the transaction.
Moore's originally scheduled execution in May 2011 could not be carried out because a previous shipment of thiopental, also arranged through Harris but supplied by a different Indian manufacturer, did not arrive in time.
When it did arrive, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told state officials not to use it because they had not filed the proper import authorization forms. The second shipment was cleared by the DEA and other agencies, including the FDA.
Early last year, the DEA had seized thiopental shipments from several other states that, it said, had violated import regulations while working with foreign drug middlemen.