Controversial Georgia Execution Uses Chemical Not Approved for Use on Humans

Harvard Law and Policy Review September 19, 2011

Troy Davis’s two decade legal odyssey beginning with his 1989 arrest for the murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail reaches its climax at today’s final clemency hearing, the last stop before his execution on Wednesday, September 21st in a Georgia execution chamber.  If the execution proceeds, Mr. Davis’s death will be accomplished by injecting him with a drug manufactured for animal euthanasia, never meant for use on humans.  The use of this drug, pentobarbital, has been the focus of several legal challenges asserting that its use is “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

Those efforts have failed thus far.

The three-drug, lethal injection protocol which has been the standard for executions for decades is now unavailable to Georgia authorities because its Danish manufacturer has refused to export it to the United States, saying that “Lundbeck adamantly opposes the distressing misuse of our product in capital punishment.”  After the Department o…