USA - South Dakota. South Dakota has bought a new supply of sodium thiopental.

South Dakota has bought a new supply of sodium thiopental. Officials spent $ 5,000 to acquire enough sodium thiopental for the lethal injections of Donald E. Moeller and Charles Russell Rhines. The drug is under storage at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, said Sara Rabern, public information officer for the attorney general's office. Moeller and Rhines have appeals pending. Neither has an execution date, but the state is preparing because of reports supply of the drug would run low. "This is a proactive response to a national shortfall," Attorney General Marty Jackley said Wednesday. "We're not in a situation where we need to use it. But the main goal is to obtain the drug ... and to keep legal custody of it." Death penalty opponents consider the purchase a chapter from the theater of the absurd. Moeller was convicted of the 1990 rape and murder of 9-year-old Rebecca O'Connell. Rhines was convicted of killing 22-year-old Donnivan Schaeffer in a 1992 burglary of the shop where Schaeffer worked. The state's last execution was that of July 11, 2007 (see), when Elijah Page died by injection for killing Chester Allan Poage in 2000. Page dropped all appeals and volunteered. That was South Dakota's first execution since George Sitts died in 1947 in the electric chair.