USA - Opinionis says: Obama tries to obstruct executions

Obama tries to obstruct executions. President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war - this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws - on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers. On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the 1st drug given under the 3-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly. A lawsuit filed in a District of Columbia federal court charges that Georgia, California and other states have received shipments of "foreign thiopental" that was "misbranded" - and worse, not FDA approved. Attorney Bradford Berenson, who worked in the George W. Bush Justice Department, told me he's not morally opposed to the death penalty. The goal of the suit was to force the FDA "to follow the law" and not allow "the importation of unapproved foreign drugs." Back to the feds. It defies all logic that federal law enforcement would investigate a state for possessing a shipment approved by the FDA for a procedure that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in a 7-2 vote in 2008. If death penalty opponents can't defeat a law at the ballot or legislatively, they go to the courts. If the courts don't comply, they go after doctors, drug companies and corrections departments, and now they have the federal government doing their dirty work. California obtained its sodium thiopental like the other targeted states, but state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton told me that the feds are not investigating the state's supply. Why would they? California has not seen an execution since federal judge Jeremy Fogel effectively ended them in February 2006. Other lawsuits have added to the tangle. FYI, the California Corrections Department had the thiopental tested, and it is now lab-certified. Berenson was unimpressed.