USA - Arizona. DOJ Tells Arizona it Illegally Obtained Death Penalty Drug

DOJ Tells Arizona it Illegally Obtained Death Penalty Drug. Hours before the scheduled execution of Donald Beaty, the Department of Justice informed the state that it should not use a controversial drug as part of the execution protocol because the state had illegally obtained the drug from a foreign source. The last-minute move stunned lawyers for Donald Beaty who had argued for months that Arizona hadn't been in compliance with federal law regarding the importation of sodium thiopental. The chief judge of the Arizona Supreme Court issued an unusual late night order delaying the execution. Arizona had consistently argued that it had properly obtained the drug. In a filing with the Arizona's Supreme Court the state's Attorney General said that it in order to "avoid questions about the legality " of the drug it had decided to comply with the request from United States Associate Deputy Attorney General Deborah A. Johnston. In the filing it said it planned to substitute another fast-acting barbiturate—pentobarbital—for the sodium thiopental. Long before the surprise announcement from Arizona's prison, Dale Baich, Beaty's public defender, had contacted the Department of Justice seeking guidance why the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had seized the drug from 5 other states this year but not Arizona. The DEA seized the imported drug from Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee informing prison officials that it believed they had failed to follow federal importation laws. But the agency it did not seize the drug from Arizona and 4 other states who had also obtained the drug from abroad. In his letters to Washington, Baich had argued that he believed that Arizona had also failed to properly import the drug and that its supply should also have been seized. "I sent 3 letters to the DOJ and made calls to the DEA that were not returned," said Baich. He said that he was at a loss to understand why the agency hadn't treated all the states uniformly. The Department of Justice refused to comment on the case.