USA - Nebraska. Nebraska has new sodium thiopental coming from Switzerland

Nebraska has new sodium thiopental coming from Switzerland. Nebraska's attorney general asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for  Michael Ryan, 63, white. The request came on the same day that the state announced it has obtained a new supply of sodium thiopental to carry out lethal injections. Attorney General Jon Bruning filed the motion seeking an execution date for Ryan, a former religious leader who was convicted of torturing and killing two of his members in 1985. “The State of Nebraska is prepared to conduct a constitutional execution and requests this court to order the enforcement of Ryan's sentence of death,” says Bruning's filing. Corrections officials are now in possession of 485 grams of sodium thiopental - the first of three drugs the state plans to administer to execute death-row inmates. In a prepared statement, Nebraska Department of Correctional Services director Robert Houston said the corrections department paid $5,411 for two batches of the drug, 42 grams and 443 grams, from a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. Corrections officials had to seek a new source for the drug after it was determined that the previous supplier, out of a strip mall in India, did not have proper licenses. Samples from the new delivery were tested and confirmed to be sodium thiopental by an independent U.S. laboratory.