USA - South Carolina. South Carolina has run out of lethal injection drug.

South Carolina has run out of lethal injection drug. Corrections Director Bryan Stirling recently told The Associated Press the state’s supply of pentobarbital expired in September 2013 and was discarded, as its effectiveness had worn off. The state still has the other two drugs it uses in its lethal injection — pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. When South Carolina looked to replenish its pentobarbital supplies, officials found no willing vendors. Stirling says getting licensed to compound the drug within the prison system would be too expensive. South Carolina uses a three-drug method to execute inmates by lethal injection. Execution by electrocution is still legally acceptable, but an inmate must select that method, in writing, two weeks before execution. Currently, the state has 44 inmates on death row. There are no executions currently scheduled. But if an order were issued now, Stirling said the state wouldn’t be able to carry it out unless the inmate opted for the electric chair. South Carolina hasn’t executed anyone since May 6, 2011, when Jeffrey Motts was the first inmate killed here using a new drug combination that replaced sodium thiopental with pentobarbital. The state switched sedatives because federal agents seized its supply as part of a nationwide investigation into whether prisons obtained the drugs legally from England. Stirling says he has been working on a solution — either finding a new provider for the drug, compounding it independently, or having legislators change death penalty statues to give pharmacies and drug providers more privacy, in hopes they’ll start selling to the state again. So far, none of those avenues have panned out.