Reuters Oklahoma Hospital Stops Supplying Execution Drugs OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) -- An Oklahoma hospital that was the sole
supplier of execution drugs to the state prison system has stopped
providing the chemicals after an anti-death penalty group questioned the
practice, officials said on Friday.
The hospital in McAlester, the same southeast Oklahoma town that is
home to the state death chamber, decided this week to suspend the sales
after the international group Human Rights Watch wrote to the hospital
board.
McAlester Regional Health Center spokesman Steve Cushing said the board
had been unaware that an 18-year-old deal to supply the prison's infirmary
included the execution drugs. Once it found out, the board decided lethal
chemicals were not part of its mission.
``Our mission is to provide healing services and to help people, not
help them end their days,'' Cushing told Reuters.
State prisons spokesman Jerry Massie said the prison would find another
supplier and that the change would not delay the scheduled execution of
Jerald Wayne Harjo on July 17.
Oklahoma has executed 13 convicts so far this year, more than any other
state, according to the Washington D.C.-based Death Penalty Information
Center. The state has executed 43 people since resuming capital punishment
in 1990, making it the fifth most-active death penalty state.
The drugs administered during lethal injections are commonly used in
hospitals around the country, Massie said.
In the death chamber, executioners combine sodium thiopental to cause
unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to stop breathing and potassium
chloride to stop the heart.
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July 6, 2001
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