Pennsylvania House Votes to Expand Death Penalty as International Controversy Mounts

On April 6, Sister Helen Prejean, author of the book "Dead Man Walking" and the inspiration for the 1995 film of the same name starring Susan Sarandon as a Catholic nun counseling a condemned prisoner, stood before a packed crowd at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia to tell her story and urge attendees -- especially young people -- to join efforts to end capital punishment in Pennsylvania.

"As long as we are not active, as long as we don't raise our voice, as long as we don't resist, we too are responsible," said the fiery, 71 year-old abolitionist.

Her talk couldn't have come at a more dubious time for the death penalty in America.

Since Governor Pat Quinn formally abolished capital punishment in Illinois in March, legislators in no less than half-a-dozen states have introduced bills to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life without parole. States where abolitionist legislation is being considered include three of the death penalty's "big four" -- Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania, which together account for nearly a third of the nation's condemned inmates. (California, which leads the nation with 711 prisoners awaiting execution, has no such legislation pending).

Separately, an international scandal involving a key ingredient used to execute inmates has focused world attention on a U.S. practice that remains out of step with much of the developed world.

Earlier this year Illinois-based Hospira, the only American-based manufacturer of the barbiturate sodium thiopental, chose to stop making it rather than promise authorities in Italy - the site of its new manufacturing facility - that its drug wouldn't be used for capital punishment. Until recently sodium thiopental, sold under the brand name Pentothal, was a primary ingredient in the lethal injection cocktails of 34 states.

Hospira was already facing a shortage of key components used in the manufacture of the drug. The decision to cease production sparked a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental and forced some states to seek the drug from less reputable overseas suppliers, sparking controversy and in some cases legal intervention.

On March 15 the Drug Enforcement Agency seized Georgia's entire stock of sodium thiopental less than a month after attorneys for inmate Andrew Grant DeYoung notified Attorney General Eric Holder that the Georgia Department of Corrections had imported a quantity of the drug without proper registration from the United Kingdom last July. Since December 2011 Britain has enforced export controls on sodium thiopental.

According to records obtained by attorney John Bentivoglio, the drug came from a small, mom-and-pop wholesaler called Dream Pharma, which ran its operations out of a rented space in the back of a driving school in Acton.

Georgia had already executed two men using the drug, both of whom kept their eyes open during the process. An analysis by the UK-based death penalty abolitionist group Reprieve suggests the quality of the sodium thiopental may have been compromised by poor storage, and both inmates were likely partially conscious throughout the execution process -- a grueling experience according to anesthesiologists .

"At last someone is paying attention to the shenanigans that have been going on with the fly-by-night company exporting large quantities of execution drugs from Britain," said Reprieve's Director Clive Stafford Smith, commenting on the DEA's action.

Kentucky and Tennessee responded to the seizure by turning over their entire stocks of sodium thiopental to federal authorities, but at least five other states are reported to have acquired the drug overseas. Last week The Times of India revealed that at least two states, Nebraska and South Dakota, were using a Mumbai-based company as their supplier; on April 6, the company, Kayem Pharmaceutical, said it would no longer ship the drug to the U.S.