By Nathan Koppel, WSJ - 3 Nov. 2010
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in London seeks to block shipment of a drug that has been used in the U.S. to execute prisoners, the latest potential roadblock to capital punishment.
The drug at issue is thiopental sodium, a barbiturate used by states to render death-row inmates unconscious before other lethal drugs are used to complete an execution.
States in recent months had to delay executions following an announcement by a U.S. maker of thiopental sodium, Hospira Inc., that it had exhausted its supply of the drug until possibly the first quarter of next year.
States have searched for alternate supplies from other states or from overseas suppliers. Arizona last week executed Jeffrey Landrigan using thiopental sodium supplied from Britain. The state will not disclose the company that supplied the drug.
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