Okla. set to execute inmate with substitute drug (used to euthanize animals)

Okla. set to execute inmate with substitute drug

OKLAHOMA CITY — A man on Oklahoma's death row for the 2001 slaying of his cellmate is believed to be the first U.S. inmate set to be executed using a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals.

John David Duty is set to die at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. A federal appeals court earlier this week upheld a judge's ruling that allows the state to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental, an anesthetic normally used in the state's lethal injection formula.

A nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental led Oklahoma to alter its three-drug cocktail.

Attorneys for Duty, 58, and two other death-row inmates challenged the state's decision to use pentobarbital, arguing during a November federal court hearing that it had not been done before in executions and could be inhumane.

http://ap.staugustine.com/pstories/us/20101216/757393932.shtml

because it works.

I didn't see the moral outrage last time this was brought up, and I don't see it now.

So I know all about it. :-)

I also stayed in a Holiday Inn Express recently!

My concerns are with the larger concept itself.